
Qa3s__LIliiU_ 
Book_____JIl_ 



eu 



THE NEW WEST 



AS RELATKD TO 



THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND THE HOME-1-^ 
MISSIONARY. 3 ^ I 



E. P. TENKEY. 



Second Kdition. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

Pcintcb at tljc 15i\jer^iDe ^tt^^* 

1878. 



^ 



THE NEW WEST 



AS BELATED TO 



THE CHRISTIAN COLLEGE AND THE HOME 
MISSIONARY, 



E. P. ten:ney. 



Seco7td Edition. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

grintcti at tf)c i!!i\jcriefitie ^tt^^* 

1878. 





3^ 



% 2 ^ 



: o 



23235 



THE NEW WEST. 



Between the valley of the Mississippi — the Old West 
— and the Pacific slope lies the New West, a mountain 
plateau from three to six thousand feet high, upon which 
rise the Rocky Mountains. Take Wyoming, Colorado, 
New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, and Mon- 
tana ; then add a minute fragment of fifty thousand 
square miles from western Dakota, comprising the 
Black Hills region, and you have the New West, — 
one third part of the United States, — as large as all 
that portion of our country east of the Mississippi. 
Colorado is equal in size to Switzerland, New England, 
New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland. Maps of Penn- 
sylvania and New York would need to add Maryland 
and Rhode Island to cover Colorado. .Ohio could lie 
down twice within the boundaries of the Centennial 
State, and then leave room enough for West Virginia 
and Connecticut. Kansas and Iowa toQ;ether are not 
its match in square miles. Colorado is equal in size to 
Old England and New. Men team goods from Colo- 
rado Springs through Ute Pass, following a longer road 
than that from Boston to Philadelphia, and yet they 
do not go out of their own State. 

The topography of the New West may be in general 
described thus : — 

The valley of the Mississippi extends four hundred 



4 THE NEW WEST. 

and fifty miles west of the river ; we then cross the 
elevated buffalo plains, seven hundred miles long and 
three hundred miles in width ; then the Rocky Moun- 
tains, — in parallel ranges from twelve thousand to four- 
teen thousand feet high, inclosing parks at an eleva- 
tion of eight or nine thousand feet, — three hundred 
and fifty miles wide ; then a width of seven hundred 
miles to the Sierra Nevada. The Great American Des- 
ert is upon the western verge of the last described belt. 
It is from seventy-five to two hundred and fifty miles 
wide. No east and west line can cross arable land all 
the way from the Rocky Mountains to the Sierra.^ 

Men who forecast the future of America will be in- 
terested in a statement of those elements of wealth, 
which indicate the capacity of this mountain plateau to 
sustain population. 

Aside from Idaho, which is, like Oregon, admirably 
adapted to sustain a large agricultural population, the 
New West is not unlike California in its general char- 
acteristics. 

One of the prime industries, when it is fully devel- 
oped, will be grazing. In the northern portion of this 
region it is necessary to make some provision for win- 
ter ; but beef-cattle and sheep graze all the year round 
without cut feed or shelter in southern Colorado, New 
Mexico, and Arizona. The pasture grounds of Colo- 
rado and New Mexico comprise seventy million acres. 
The grama grass is so nutritious that stock and dairy 
men who have had many years experience in the val- 
ley of the Mississippi and also on the great plains, are 
now moving to the New West. The profit is estimated 
at about fifty per cent, where the business is under- 
stood. It is an interest of more promise than all the 
gold mines in the country. In the future, when the 

^ Vide Wheeler's Prelimmary Report on Nevada, etc. 



THE NEW WEST. 5 

slopes of both oceans are crowded, and the valley of 
the Mississippi is a garden, the great herding ground 
of the continent will be on the plains of our New West. 
The present value of the hay crop and pasturage of 
the United States — including dairy products, wool, 
and the increase of live stock, — is nine hundred and 
seventy-three million dollars, which exceeds in value 
fill the cotton, corn, wheat, and other farm products of 
the country.^ As an element of national wealth, these 
vast pastures, which have fed the buffaloes for ages, are 
likely to contribute quite as much to the country as 
any other equal area not occupied by a manufacturing, 
mining, or commercial population. Those who know 
the manner of life most frequently led by herdsmen 
will tremble for the future, unless the principles of the 
Gospel obtain strong hold in the New West in its form- V 
ing period, and Christian education exerts its elevating- 
influence, growing with the growth of the people. 

Agricultural operations in this region promise to 
be very profitable. Portions of Colorado and New 
Mexico, to the amount of four million acres, are watered 
by rains, and the same is true of no small areas, here 
and there, in the mountains or near them, throughout 
the New West. But, in the main, irrigation is neces- 
sary, and the farms are planted on the borders of 
mountain streams fed by melting snow. This is every 
w^ay an advantage. The crops are not injured by rain, 
or its withholding. Drought spoils one fourth of the 
crops of the world. Farming carried on by irrigation 
is miich more profitable than in the ordinary process, 
and the land is kept in good heart by it through cen- 
turies.^ Chemical analysis of the soil of the New West 

1 Stewart's Irrigation, page 18. 

2 See Stewart's valuable work on irrigation, which is a standard author- 
ity. A foot of water is needed over the whole soil while the ci'ops are 



6 THE NEW WEST. 

shows that it is of a remarkably good qiiahty, needing 
only the touch of water to produce the best crops in 
the country, notably of wheat. It will, on this account, 
support a large population in proportion to the surflice 
cultivated. In estimating the agricultural resources of 
this region, the area of farming land may be, in respect 
to ability to support population, doubled or nearly so 
on account of the advantages of a good soil under irri- 
gation. It will also support a larger population than 
the same land east, since it can be used mainly to raise 
vegetable food for man. In the eastern States a former 
must set apart acres to raise hay and cattle to keep the 
rest of his farm in good condition ; and in the valley 
of the Mississippi hay must be raised to keep cattle 
through the winter ; in general, neither of these neces- 
sities exists in the New West. The whole area of 
farm lands can be used for man's garden or granary. 

growing. Three fourths of our rain-fall runs off or comes at the wrong 
time of year for crops. The English derive more advantage from less 
rain-fall than we have, because it comes a little at a time during the season 
when it is most needed. American farmers, east and west, raise less per 
acre than they would by partial irrigation. The average crop all over the 
country might be largely increased by the systematic distribution of water 
from streams. Market gardening often suffers for want of water at a 
critical time. " Growing plants contain from seventy to ninety-five per 

cent, of water The solid portion of the plant consists of matters 

which enter into it only while in solution in water No water, whether 

it be in the state of liquid or vapor, can enter into any other part of a plant 

than its I'oots The summer rain-fall in our climate is rarely, if ever, 

adequate to the requirements of what would be a maximum crop, consistent 
with the probabilities of the soil." [Stewart, page 9.] Water, when used 
in irrigation, " brings within reach of the plants a largely increased amount 
of nutriment. Water is the universal solvent. No water in its natural con- 
dition is pure. The water of springs and streams holds in sohition or 
suspension a quantity of mineral and gaseous matters, that possess high 
fertilizing value." [Page 18.] Irrigation has been used on the same soil 
two hundred years in New Mexico, without other fertilizing properties 
than that brought by the water. 

The Britisli government has recently expended seventy million dollars in 
irrigating works in India. 



THE NEW WEST. 7 . 

This consideration alone would be equal to adding, 
perhaps, one third to the amount of arable land in the 
New West. While, therefore, that which can be irri- 
gated is little compared with the whole surface, it is 
practically enough to support a vast population. It is 
estimated that Colorado and New Mexico have agricul- 
tural resources to maintain ten million inhabitants. 

Farminci^ in Colorado is at this time a decided success. 
There will be always a good market for garden and 
field produce among the mining and grazing people, 
on account of th. limited area suitable for cultivation 
and the distance from competition. The farm lands 
will, therefore, have a comparatively dense population 
at some future time. But it will for the most part be 
scattered along the borders of streams ; and the Gospel i- 
message will need to be borne to every door by a min- 
istry trained upon neighboring soil and adapted to the 
field. 

This region has a considerable quantity of timber in 
the mountains, enough for the use of the country. 
The river bottoms are lined with scrub-oak, box-elder, 
and Cottonwood. 

Inexhaustible store of excellent iron ore is found in 
southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. Near 
the iron, is the best coal west of Pennsylvania. For 
coking, it is pronoimced by experts to be equal to the 
Connellsville coal. Furnaces and rollino; mills will 
abound in this region in the future. That this industry 
will be developed at no distant day is certain, since 
there is no coal for four hundred miles east, no good 
coal in Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, or California. The 
coal is now sent to Nevada for smelting. If any Chris- 
tian college is to be planted in the New West, the one I 
In Colorado is well located, in proximity to this coal 
and iron region. 



8 THE NEW WEST. 

It is hardly needful to speak of the gold and silver 
mines, whose fame has gone out to all the world. One 
hundred millions of gold have been sent from Montana 
alone. The annual yield of Colorado is eight millions, 
which is more than California produced in 1870. The 
passion for mining is the instrument of Providence in 
transferring populations to new seats of empire. The 
history of California and Australia is now repeating it- 
self in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Utah, Ari- 
zona, and New Mexico, — the richest region m the world. 

The climate will, however, do more than all other 
agencies towards settling the New West. " The em- 
pire of climate," says Montesquieu, "is the most pow- 
erful of all empires." West of the valley of' the Miss- 
issippi the lan(jl rises, sloping like a wdde roof toward 
the Rocky ridgepole of the continent ; so that this part 
of the country is too high and dry for malarial diseases, 
asthma, bronchitis, or consumption. Consumption may 
be prevented by moving to Colorado ; those who go 
with quick consumption fixed upon them find that the 
disease is accelerated by the rarity of the atmosphere ; 
but chronic consumption is cured by the climate. Col- 
orado soil and air are so dry that an axe left out of 
doors will not rust, if it be covered from snow and rain. 
Save in the mountains and in their near neighbor- 
hood, there is very little snow and a general absence 
of rain. Warm currents from the South Pacific touch 
the mountains, modifying the air. I have seen men 
plowing in February eight thousand feet above the 
sea near Central. In the vicinity of Colorado Springs 
sheep graze all winter, six thousand feet above the sea, 
in the latitude of Washington. Parties have indulged 
in picnics out of doors upon a given day each week for 
ten weeks of December, January, and February. A 
weather record of two years at Colorado Springs gives, 
— in one year three hundred and twenty-two fair and 



THE NEW WEST. 9 

clear days, and forty-four cloudy ; the year following, 
three hundred and twelve fair and clear, and fifty-three 
cloudy. 

One third of the population of Colorado are recon- 
structed invalids. Asthmatic conventions meet in this 
favored country to invite all America to breathe this 
healing atmosphere. Tough, rugged people — who 
coughed ten years in the east — are now calling on all 
dwellers in fog banks and low lands to move to this 
mountainous plateau. The whole New West is a sani- 
tarium ; the northern part mild in winter, and the 
southern part cool in summer. Families with the seeds 
of early death in them will fly for refuge to these great 
central mountain resrions. The invalids of the United 
States comprise not a small part of the population ; and 
many of those who have property will, as they become 
acquainted with the facts, move into one of the beauti- 
ful towns at the eastern base of the Rocky Mountains. 

The scenery is unique. The length of the main 
range of mountains and the spurs of the main range 
within the limits of Colorado is twelve hundred miles, 
averaging twelve thousand feet high ; nearly a score of 
peaks rise to a height of more than fourteen thousand 
feet. The White Hills of New England, set down in 
one of the parks, would make no great addition to the 
scenery, Switzerland, so far as size is concerned, could 
be placed in a pocket of Colorado. 

Under the shadows of the Sierra Madre are already 
growing up some of the most home-like and attractive 
towns in America, well watered and shaded, with 
comely houses standing amid grass plots and flower 
gardens. Colorado Springs has a population of thirty- 
five hundred people, upon a spot where antelopes were 
feeding six years ago, and where the Indians were tak- 
ing scalps only a little before that. This town has 
twenty-one miles of trees, upon streets a hundred feet 



10 THE NEW WEST. 

wide, or avenues of one hundred and forty. Four rows 
of trees upon one street extend two miles. A school 
building costing twenty thousand dollars, and comfort- 
able houses of worship, indicate the character of the 
Y people. This colony and the one at Grreeley, are the 
only ones in the State where liquor selling is forbidden 
in every deed of land, and in the policy of ttie local 
government. Pike's Peak rises not far off, and smaller 
mountains plant their feet within a mile or two of the 
town. The unsurpassed wonders of Glen Eyrie, Queen's 
Canon, the Garden -of the Gods, Manitou Mineral 
Springs, Ute Pass, and Chiann Canon — all within five 
miles of the town — attract tourists from all the world. 
Any one of these famous resorts would make the for- 
tune of a watering place in the east. Professor Hayden 
says that he never saw so wonderful a combination of 
grand scenery in the neighborhood of medical springs. 
The rocky spires and changing shadows of Chiann 
mountain, seen four miles to the southwest of the town, 
give constant delight to every eye. It is not far to 
walk or ride into quiet glens, with flowing fountains, 
rocky streams, abundant foliage, and flowers, with 
mountain walls and massive peaks rising on every side. 

May we not anticipate an honorable future for a lit- 
erary institution, established as a fountain of Christian 
influence, in this enchanting spot ? " Most earnestly I 
believe," says a writer whose eyes are never weary in 
beholding the forms of these mountains, and whose 
fame is known to all literature, " that there is to be 
born of these plains and mountains, all along the great 
central plateaus of our continent, the very best life, 
physical and mental, of the coming centuries." 

The population of the New West is, probably, at this 
time, not far from seven hundred thousand, — 

" The fiist low wash of waves, where soon 
Shall roll the human soa." 




< 
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THE NEW WEST. 11 

In the ten years before the hist census the seven 
States east of this region, having twice the area of Col- 
orado and New Mexico, increased their popuhxtion by 
three milhons. Emigration will soon occupy by hun- 
dreds of thousands, and then by millions, the eastern 
border of the New West. The laws which govern the 
westward movement of population are now well un- 
derstood. Not many years can pass before the ter- 
ritories will become States. Whenever the Indian 
difficulties, which have stood in the way of settlement, 
are adjusted, homes on this uplancj plateau will be 
sought for wdth the same eagerness that has character- 
ized our westward bound population throughout Amer- 
ican history. The Indian question is so far settled in 
Colorado, that there is now no more danger from red 
men than there is in Massachusetts or New York. Col- 
orado is, therefore, now increasing rapidly in popula- 
tion. 

It is not, however, needful to ask whether this third 
part of the United States will be largely peopled within 
ten, twenty, fifty, or a hundred years. These periods 
are brief in the upbuilding of States, as in the life of 
the human race. We need not ask whether or not our 
statisticians are correct, who reckon on a population 
of a hundred millions in the year 1900 ; or whether 
there will be two hundred millions at the bi-centen- 
nial. Nor need we examine the grounds of the state- 
ment in the new edition of the British Encyclopaadia, 
that, if the natural resources of x^merica were fully 
developed, it would sustain a population of thirty-six 
hundred millions, and that it is not improbable that 
this number may people America w^ithin three or four 
centuries. We need not ask how soon Colorado, New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and 
Wyoming will number ten millions, twenty, or forty, 



12 THE NEW WEST. 

since it is only a question of time when these regions 
will be practically filled with a grazing, farming, min- 
ing, manufacturing population, — a New West, less 
densely crowded than the Atlantic seaboard, or the 
Pacific shore, or the swarming valley of the Mississippi, 
yet supporting no small share of the American people. 
It is enough for the purpose of this paper to state 
that there is now a population of a quarter of a million 
in Colorado and New Mexico ; and that emigrants are 
now pouring into almost every part of the New West 
every year ; and that the most practical business men 
in the country, who are conversant with the move- 
ments of population in America, are taking most posi- 
tive action with reference to the immediate occupancy 
of Colorado, and the developments of a growing trade 
in this new western country. Important railways 
have been built, upoij the ground that the region is 
already a very remunerative one for traf&c, and that it 
will be soon occupied by a prosperous population. The 
result, in the most notable instance of far-sightedness 
and economical management, is fully justifying the 
3onfidence of those who have engaged in the work.^ 

1 The Denver and Rio Grande Railway. 



II. 

What sort of an element will the New West make 
in the Republic of the future ? 

We shall find a very large population of widely scat- 
tered and wandering herdsmen, enrolled in sparse vot- 
ing precincts ; and of farmers, up and down reaches of 
creeks and ditch ways ; and of miners, located here 
and there in mountain camps ; and a few large towns 
and cities, not unlike the surrounding population, — a 
people not easily brought under Gospel influences at 
this time, in which the character of these great States 
of the future is shaping itself. Men apparently 
thoughtless as their cattle, drift to the border, wherever 
that shifting boundary may be, " floating along on the 
edge of colonization like weeds borne forward by the 
waves of sea." Many are the herdsmen, ranchmen, 
miners, traffickers, who move from one lonely point 
to another, everywhere at home under the bright sky, 
and little more mindful of spiritual development than 
the Indians who roamed the plains, or wandered over 
the mountains before them. Not a few of those who 
have higher aims in life, are restlessly chasing the roll- 
ing dollar, or engrossed in the heavy cares of very un- 
certain business, and others are coining money, — all 
too busy to heed the voice of God. As the years go 
by, the population becomes more fixed ; but their gen- 
eral characteristics are very different from those which 
obtain in older States. It is not strange, therefore, 
that it is difficult to find home missionaries adapted to 



14 THE NEW WEST. 

the people, in sufficient numbers to meet the wants of 
these growing communities, and that the principles 
which underlie social morality, and national success, are 
neglected by no small portion of the population. 

The bright-eyed young men now perched upon the 
tops of Colorado mountains, or nestling in deep basins 
walled in by peaks of gold, are not easily led into the 
paths of spiritual peace. There are, perhaps, men of 
no small culture in their neighborhood, who reject 
Christianity ; and they hear no presentation of the 
Gospel, or, hearing it, have no respect for it in the 
shape in which it comes to them. Mining populations 
comprise some of the most intelligent men in the coun- 
try, often those educated in the best schools of America 
or Europe ; and if they are not Christian men, their 
influence tends to undermine the faith of those easily 
shaken. It requires only a small acquaintance with 
life in the far west, to recognize the elements for up- 
building a godless empire, if the power of the Gospel 
does not make itself felt through a Christian education, 
so broad, manly, thorough, as to win the respect of the 
leaders of public opinion, and to influence the masses 
through men trained upon the ground for this special 
work. There is no section of the country where it is 
so needful to plant a Christian college, and to endow it 
generously, as in the neighborhood of the richest mines 
of our New West. Unless the Christian people in the 
older States, who cry unto God day and night for the 
coming of His kingdom, and who love to give, and to 
sacrifice, for this end, will establish Christian educa- 
tion in these regions ; and unless, as the years go by, it 
becomes equipped at every point, and able to furnish 
the very best culture, - — the New West will certainly 
array itself in opposition to Christian faith and life. It 
is impossible to present this point so sharply as it ought 



THE NEW WEST. • Jo 

to be made. There has been nowhere in the experi- 
ence of the nation any such condition for the founding 
of new States as we have seen in the gold countries. 
The settlement of the valley of the Mississippi wit- 
nessed no such reckless career as that which has ex- 
isted in the very early planting of these new regions. 
If, therefore, there be added to this disadvantage an 
anti-christian influence on the part of the scientific lead- 
ers of a society in which all are more or less interested 
in mining, it will be very difficult to win the people to 
Christian faith and life, unless Christianity has firm hold 
of the higher, education of the youth in these regions. 
The mining industry of Colorado is not only at present 
more important than that in any other part of the 
country, save California and Nevada, but it is likely to 
be so. This point, therefore, ought to be strongly for- 
tified with a Christian college. Infidelity is often based 
on a misconception of Christianity. It is disarmed by 
any work that manifests light and love as they appear 
in the Gospel. An intelligent and loving Christianity 
has nothing to fear ; but it must be intelligent. 

Without the sharp intellectual training of our colleges, 
the leaders of society would be shorn of their power, 
or wield it in the fashion of semi-barbarians. But if 
the college be infidel or Jesuitical, morality is under- 
mined, and the republic cannot stand. Unless there is a 
positive Christian influence in our higher schools, Chris- 
tianity will go to the wall, and our nation will become 
weak through wickedness. Civilization perpetuates it- 
self through tlie higher education. The culture of the 
college permeates society. If the college is godless, the 
civilization will be half pagan. If Christianity is fun- 
damental in elevating the race, the Christian college is 
the instrument through which to advance Christian civ- 
ilization. Give to irreligion and infidelity the training 



16 ' THE NEW WEST. 

of the most promising youth in our country for one or 
two generations, and the fountain of our positive Chris'- 
tian influences for the renovation of the world will be 
dried up. 

There will be no lack of education in the far West ; 
whether it will be Christian, is for Christian men to de- 
termine. Infidelity will not hesitate to ally to itself 
the best of scientific and literary culture. Suppose 
that young men master the problems they undertake, 
even if they pay no attention to the question of the 
truthfulness of Christianity and the basis of its claims, 
still they think themselves equal with all their intel- 
lectual acumen, to pronounce upon the highest spiritr 
ual themes, concerning which they have heard more oi 
less since boyhood. And if they do not accept Chris- 
tianity, they hardly admit that they have not given 
attention to it. Allow every claim except the claims 
of God to be urged in school days, and the voice of 
God will go unheeded. 

A Christian education is not, however, likely to de- 
velop itself in frontier society without the direct inter- 
position of the men who have a purpose to do it. If no 
attention is given to it, irreligion and skepticism will 
educate the children. Allow the higher education of a 
frontier State to become the football of the average pol- 
itician, and Christianity will find no quiet abiding place 
in it. The leading Christian men who have lived in the 
vicinity of these experiments are clear in their testi- 
mony, that it is almost impossible to develop and carry 
forward a wise plan for the higher Christian education 
in connection with State institutions. The State man- 
agement is at an early stage put upon guard against the 
interest of various sects, and, on the other hand, anti- 
Christian influences stand pressing against the door ; so 
there is likely to spring up a lack of sympathy with the 
Christian element in society, which indeed, often mani- 



THE NEW ViEST. 17 

fests itself at the outset. Yet there is no one instru- 
mentahty for the world's moral advancement so impor- 
tant as the Christian training of youth, who are to be 
the leaders of the world in the years next ensuing. It 
is on this account, that many parents, whose own lives 
are failures morally, are anxious to secure education 
under Christian teachers for their own children, at the 
time when they most need the restraining influences of 
religious faith and precept. 

Unless the Christian men of America who propose 
to energize Christianity with their own business energy, 
establish the Christian college in the New West, it will 
be in vain that they try to plant here and there a 
Christian church. One college of infidel tendencies, 
well manned, will — in the absence of a Christian 
institution of powerful influence — do much toward de- 
stroying their churches. There is at present no lack 
of unbelief on the check list of our border States ; rein- 
force this element by an influential college, and the 
hands of feeble churches will be soon paralyzed. Un- 
less we can found the Christian college, and in every 
generation imbue some portion of the leaders of the 
State with the principles of Christian faith and life ; 
and train a ministry upon the ground adapted to the 
wants of the country ; and train them so thoroughly, 
intellectually, and spiritually, that they can win a hear- 
ing and a following, — we shall be pouring water into 
the sand to try to establish churches in the New West. 
The Christian college is an " institution for perpetuat- 
ing Christianity in the w^orld." ^ 

The grand missionary movements of the world are 
doing the work whose spring is in the Christian school. 
Leaving out of account the vivifying influence of a 

^ J. P. Thompson, D. D., College Society Address. 
2 



18 THE NEW WEST. 

Christian college upon the men and women who are to 
make the future of new States, it must be said that for 
the purpose of ministerial training the college is funda- 
mental. Men will not trust sheep to herdsmen ill- 
fitted to their work. An illiterate ministry is notunfre- 
quentlj the bane of Christianity in the border country. 
A clergyman well adapted to the condition of society 
in an old State, may in the far West fail utterly to ex- 
ercise the power which one of the sons of the soil 
trained to work on that soil will have, though of less 
intellectual vigor. The Church can never gain control 
without an efficient pastorate in every section of these 
new regions. 

The very pressure for more Christian work, the 
world over, calls for the upbuilding of consecrated 
schools. There are Christian colleges in the country 
that can be easily counted on one's fingers, which have 
educated the men who have done the most to push for- 
ward home and foreign missionary work. The king- 
dom of Christ would move far backward, if we were to 
leave out of account the Christian influence of these 
colleges. The Christian college for training the lead- 
ers of society, and for educating an efficient ministry, 
is the instrument chosen of God, and used age after 
age. He chooses to work through organizations; he 
has honored and indorsed the Christian college. His 
instrument is fitted to do His work. The history of 
this country proves it, and shows the wisdom of found- 
ing such colleges for creating a Christian civilization. 
If we are wise, we shall put this renovating power into 
the far West. 

" Old experience doth attain 

To something like prophetic strain." 

There is no Christian duty more clearly pointed out by 
Providence than that of founding the Christian college 



THE NEW WEST. 19 

on home missionary ground. The college will endure, 
although individual teachers and graduates fall like 
leaves. Churches will rise and fall in the chan(»:ino: 
camps among the mountains ; but the college will 
prove a perpetual power, influencing every generation 
of the state, growing through the centuries like some 
gigantic tree on the slopes of the Sierra, whose life 
is continued by a foliage constantly perishing and con- 
stantly renewed. 

The Christian interests of the New West cannot be 
secured beyond peradventure in any other way than by 
the establishment of a Christian college for the young 
people who will, in their maturity, mould the state. 
If large-hearted givers will furnish a permanent sup- 
ply of well trained men for the Gospel ministry, and 
exercise a constant influence for good upon the flower 
of the youth, in a State whose population will be num- 
bered by millions, they will take rank with the noblest 
benefactors of their race. Those men are shortsighted 
who will only do and die to-day. The Church of God 
knows nothing of months and years. A thousand 
years are as one day. The conflict between good and 
evil will go forward century after century, until the 
perfect reign of peace ; and God's peace on the earth 
will never be maintained except through the reign of 
principles that accord with the most enlightened rea- 
son. One generation must, then, join hands with 
another in buildino- those seminaries of learnino; which 
will train the leaders of the world for Christ. Unless 
Christian men have the forethought, enterprise, and 
patience to do this, the Church of God cannot be car- 
ried forward. 

Are there not to-day two million sheep feeding on 
the Rio Grande ? One might as well build a mill in 
southern Colorado without water power or steam to 



20 THE NEW WEST. 

manufacture their wool, as to try to build up a Chris- 
tian civilization on the frontier, — amid a half Mexican ^ 
pojDulation, wandering herdsman, scattered ranchmen, 
rough mining camps, and towns with a population 
gathered from the four winds, — without a Christian 
college. He who builds a church in a new country is 
dealing wisely, but he w^hose money founds a college is 
planting the Christian pleader, physician, pedagogue, 
press, pulpit, platform, over a vast area of country 
through all ages of time. He who puts his money 
into Christian enterprises upon a foreign shore is a 
good servant of Grod ; but he who will be the honored 
instrument in planting a Christian college in the 
New West where it is imperatively needed to-day, will 
have mercy upon his own countrymen, and deserve the 
gratitude of uncounted generations. He will in this 
way exert an influence for raising to the heights of a 
Christian life the foreign element in the region of the 
college, and bestow a benediction upon the shining 
shores of far-off seas in distant ages. The time will not 
soon come when men will cease to send out mission- 
aries ; but there will not be so long the golden oppor- 
tunity to become the founders of Christian colleges at 
points in the West where they are beyond doubt 
needed at this hour, and where they will wield a com- 
manding power till time shall be no more. 



III. 

It has been the first instinct of the Gospel ministry 
to perpetuate itself by providing the means of clerical 
training*. Those who have derived advantao-es from 
Christian colleges appreciate most highly the import- 
ance of providing like privileges for others. The first 
legal foundation for a college at Oxford was the work 
of a bishop, who was followed by clerical founders of 
eleven other colleges at Oxford. Since, however, a 
broad and manly education is needed for the clergy- 
man, the English universities have proved of as much 
advantage to all the leaders of public opinion as to the 
Christian ministry. No one is fit for the most sacred 
calling among men unless he has received a well pro- 
portioned education as a man. What the minister 
needs, in his general training, is what is needed by all 
who are liberally educated. Library, cabinet, labora- 
tory, living teachers, quickening contact with fellow 
pupils, are good for parishioner as well as parson. 

Harvard and Yale were founded by clergymen to 
train men for the pulpit. But it is now more than 
twenty-five years since the Alumni of Yale College 
enrolled four signers of the Declaration of Indepen- 
dence, three members of the convention forming the 
Constitution of the United States, a vice-president, 
seven members of the cabinet, four foreign ministers, 
eighty-four judges of the United States or of State su- 
preme courts, one hundred seventy-eight members of 
Congress, forty governors and lieutenant-governors. 



22 THE NEW WEST. 

and one hundred forty-one presidents and professors of 
colleges. There are now above eight thousand grad- 
uates. 

Harvard was called the " School of the Prophets " 
for a hundred years. That the college has been of 
some use to the world besides educating " prophets," 
is proved by such names as Otis, Warren, Hancock, 
Samuel Adams, President Adams — father and son, — 
Prescott, Bancroft, Motley, Emerson, Sumner, Phillips, 
and a host of those who have kindled the fires of pa- 
triotism and given life to the Republic. 

Dartmouth College furnished thirty-five hundred 
and fifty graduates in ninety-six years, among whom 
were thirty-one judges of the United States or of State 
supreme courts, seventy-six members of congress, two 
United States cabinet ministers, four ambassadors to 
foreign courts, fifteen governors, and one hundred 
thirty-one presidents or professors of colleges. Web- 
ster and Choate have been worth incalculably more to 
America than all the money given for the endowment 
of Dartmouth College. 

Princeton College in its first century not only edu- 
cated nearly four hundred fifty ministers, and fifty-four 
presidents and professors in colleges, but it trained for 
public service a president and vice-presidents, mem- 
bers of the cabinet, judges of the United States or of 
State supreme courts, members of Congress, governors., 
of States, — not less than one hundred sixty-eight per- 
sons occupying the highest positions in our country. 
Twenty-seven hundred graduates left Princeton in its 
first hundred years, making their influence felt in every 
corner of our country. 

These colleges, founded by clergymen to give a well 
proportioned culture to the Christian ministry of all 
generations, have, also, trained the leading public men 
of America. Let no man, therefore, despise the prac- 



,/ 



THE NEW WEST. 23 

tical wisdom of that Society which has sought to estab- 
lish Christian colleges at strategic points in the Old 
West, and which aims to do the same work in the New 
West. The donors to the American College and Edu- 
cation Society will do more in shaping the distant fu- 
ture of the United States than any other band of the 
same number in the nation. It will be impossible to 
plant a Christian college in Colorado, without doing 
much, thereby, toward modifying the future of New 
Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Wyoming, and every rising 
State in that region. 

Remove from America the influence of the seventy 
thousand persons who graduated at American colleges ., 
before 1856, and you would put out the light of Church 
and State. The statisticians of thirty years ago, pre- 
pared lists enumerating, — six hundred thirty mem- 
bers of Congress, four hundred judges in supreme 
courts, two hundred governors and lieutenant-govern- 
ors, one hundred sixty presidents and four hundred 
professors of colleges, among the thirty-five thousand 
graduates of America at that date. The bearing of this 
statement upon the argument of this paper is made 
clear by the fact that of the forty-two thousand grad- 
uates before 1850, thirty-six thousand of them were 
trained in colleges under the leading management of 
Congregational and Presbyterian Christians.^ One 
hundred and four, of the first one hundred and nine- 
teen colleges established in the country, are of a de- i 
cidedly Christian character and faith.^ 

It is, therefore, absolutely certain that colleges in 
America have been in the main founded by Christian 
people for the sake of educating a ministry, and train- ^ 
ing the leading minds of the nation. And it is abso- 

^ Eighth Report of the College Society. 
2 Thirteenth Report of the College Society. 



24 THE NEW WEST. 

lutely certain that the American College and Education /^ 
Society, which has been engaged for many years in 
building Christian colleges in the West, is working in 
the historic line, the line of certain success, and that 
it will accomplish what it undertakes to do. It is the 
organ of a Christian sentiment, as prevalent and power- 
ful as Christianity itself. The founding of Christian 
colleges is essential to the propagation of Christianity ; 
this is proved by the history of the progress of the 
kingdom of God in the world ; this work will, therefore, 
be carried forward. And it is now the very hour for 
planting a strong Christian college in the New West, 
which includes territorially one third of the United 
States, and contains at this hour a vigorous population 
busily laying the foundation of future States. The foun- 
dation of one State is so far laid, that it has been received 
into the Union ; and a Christian college ought to be 
planted there at once by the Christian men who intend 
to take and to hold that part of the continent for Christ. 
Does not the Christian College bear the same rela- 
tion to the leaders of Church and State that the common 
school does to the average mind ? Does it not educate 
certain men, who in turn become colleges to the people 
whose school-days are short? He who founds a Chris- 
tian college is training Christian merchants, editors, 
teachers, lawyers, physicians, statesmen, and establish- 
ing Christian instrumentalities innumerable ; and his 
work will continue till day and night cease. No lights 
houses on the coast are so useful as these Christian lights 
planted on the borders of civilization ; no artesian wells, 
irrio-atins!: arid wastes, of such service to mankind as 
these fountains of Christian hfe ; no seeds so fruitful as 
these Christian colleges for hundreds of generations. 
Do not trained intellectual forces rule society ? Is there 
no demand for mind in this world ? Are not the insti- 



THE NEW WEST. 25 

tntions whose business it is to develop mental power 
vital to civilization ? And is it not essential that they 
be under Christian management, if Christ is to conquer 
the world ? Shall our Christian workers relinquish their 
hold on the centres of power? If the principles of the 
Gospel are to pervade the New West, and control its 
destinies, there is no way in which Christian men can 
aid so efficiently as by founding a Christian college 
early in the development of that region. If the think- 
ers of that wild, beautiful country, of promise so vast in 
the future, are trained under Christian teachers, their 
thoughts will develop into Christian States. Is it not a 
a noble thing to aim for, to direct the formative powers, 
to bring the leading mental forces of awakening empires 
into captivity to Christ. The men who give their 
money to this work touch the sources of Christian prog- 
ress in our country in the near and distant future. If 
it is wise to clothe and feed America, it is Christian 
wisdom to use a part of the money made in the busi- 
ness, for endowing the educated men of America with 
the thoughts of God. 

This is not a petty question, as to giving a little in- 
struction in Latin grammar, algebra, and rhetoric. 
The Jesuits would, as soon as not, do that; and all / 
irreligious powers w^ould be glad to combine to do it. 
But it is a question, wdiether or not the men of an 
earnest and aggressive Christian foith and life are 
quick sighted and far sighted enough to seize on the 
instruments of education, for no dull and narrow secta- 
rian ends, but for the ]3urpose of filling the minds of 
wide-awake young men with principles of morality 
and faith, which are the true foundation of the Repub- 
lic and of all good to the human race. Shall this 
work be neglected or delegated to those whose spirit- 
ual vision is clouded by the haze of old superstition or 



20 THE NEW WEST. 

of new unbelief? Shall we lay up beams of silver and 
gold to glisten in the eastern sun, or shall we use our 
silver and gold for laying the foundations of many 
generations in some Christian temple of learning, 
which will be illumined by the Spirit of God, which will 
send its light into every mountain valley and along the 
borders of every stream, and across every wide plain, 
in a third part of our continent ? 

Could we for a moment examine, somewhat in de- 
tail, the Avork already inaugurated by the colleges un- 
der the care of the College Society, we should see that 
the planting of Christian colleges in home missionary 
fields is second in importance to no work we undertake 
for Christ. Its relation to the future of our country 
is that of the heart to the body. If the name and 
power of Christ are to be honored in coming ages, we 
must train the men of the future for the Master, in 
their school-days. Pour Christianity into the fountain, 
and it will flow out in life- sri vino; streams. God's chan- 
nel of mercy to the earth runs through the Christian 
college. 

It is already a matter of history that the schools fos- 
tered by our College Society have been fountain heads 
of Christian life in the West. And is not this in the 
historic line ? Did not one hundred and seventy young 
men become Christians in six revivals in Dartmouth 
College ? Did not five hundred devote themselves to 
Christ in fourteen out of the twenty revivals in Yale 
College during its first century ? Were there not three 
hundred conversions in Amherst College within thirty 
years ? What, then, ought to be the response from the 
West? In Illinois, Wabash, and Marietta colleges, 
there were twenty revivals recorded in eighteen years 
before 1848. One hundred fourteen of the first one 



THE NEW WEST. 27 

hundred thirty-one graduates were Christians. In Ma- 
rietta, seventy-five per cent, of the four hundred four 
graduates in thirty-eight years have been Christians, 
one third of them converted in college. Did not Major 
Williams, of New London, do good service to the di- 
vine kingdom, in his annual donation toward the ex- 
penses of Marietta during ten years, at a critical tune 
in the history of the college ? Without him, or some 
man like him, there would have been no college. Wa- 
bash was established by a handful of poor home mis- 
sionaries kneeling in the forest on a November day, 
dedicating the frozen ground and its cloak of snow to 
Almighty God. Three thousand students on that 
ground havG been trained under Christian teachers. 
Fourteen years witnessed nine revivals. Four fifths of 
the graduates of Beloit College have gone out to the 
world as Christian men. Oberlin has grown up in a 
constant revival. Its light is like that of the sun, illu- 
minatins: a vast area of the West and South. Chris- 
tian students have gone out like an army to take the 
kingdom of heaven by force. The Western Reserve 
College, founded by home missionaries to train home 
missionaries, has had in all departments not less than 
five thousand students. It has been not uncommon to 
find from two thirds to four fifths of the whole number 
of pupils at any given time enrolled as men of Chris- 
tian character and influence. 

These colleges have aided Christian 'families in edu- 
cating their children, and they have, also, proved a 
very positive power in making known the claims of a 
religious life to students who have not previously 
heard the Gospel message. The number of graduates 
from the colleges that have been aided by the College 
Society is now nearly three thousand ; it is probable 
that thirty thousand students have been in attendance 



28 THE NEW WEST. 

for a greater or less length of time.^ John Todd said 
that we had every evidence of the divine approval of 
this noble work, except that no archangel had yet 
thrust down a trumpet to blow the approbation of God 
into our ears.^ 

Does it need to be said that no such spiritual results 
have been known, or are likely to be known, where 
Christian people neglect to plant the Christian college, 
and leave the youth to be cared for by unbelievers or 
by Jesuits ? 

If it be true that American colleges have been 
founded, in the first instance, like those of the Old 
World, for maintaining an educated ministry,^ it is in 
point to inquire concerning the relation of the Chris- 
tian college to clerical ranks, since it is mainly upon 
this ground that the college is early planted in the 
home missionary field. 

The religious influence of the college has a vital 
bearing on this. Revivals in colleges increase the 
number of Gospel heralds. It is estimated that one 
quarter of our ministry become Christians in college. 
One half of the ministers from those colleges aided 
by the College Society, commenced their Christian 
course in term time.* John Robinson, the leader of 
the Pilgrims, John Cotton, Jonathan Edwards — father 
and son, — Samuel Hopkins, Ebenezer Porter, Moses 
Stuart, B. B. Ed^vards, E. E. Cornelius, B. B. Wisner, 

1 Dr. J. E. lioy, Congregational Quarterly, January, 1877. 

2 Plain Letters. 

8 The emphasis placed upon an educated ministry is shown by the state- 
ment in Tyler's Prayer for Colleges, — upon the authority of John Kilborn, 
A. M., — that all but thirty-three of nine hundred Congregational minis- 
ters in Connecticut before 1832 were college graduates ; and that only fifty- 
eight of the eleven liundred alumni of Andover Seminary before 1851 had 
not received a college education. Revised edition, p. 316. 

4 Lyman Whiting, Address College Society. 



THE NEW WEST. 29 

E. N. Kirk, and a host of the most useful ministers in 
America, began a Christian hfe in college.^ 
' Tlie Christian college, designed to train Christian 
preachers, creates an atmosphere favorable for recruit- 
ing the ministry. The colleges of America have met 
the demand, furnishing most ministers when most 
needed, in the early settlement of the regions where 
they are located. When Harvard was two hundred 
years old, more than one fourth of her graduates were 
enrolled as ministers; during the first sixty years, more 
than one half became pastors. Yale has given above 
two thousand graduates to this work, — about one 
fourth of all. During the first- twelve years, three 
fourths of her alumni entered the ministry, and during 
the first thirty years nearly one half. The New Eng- 
land theology has been shaped in no small degree by 
thinkers trained in this college. Forty-six out of nine- 
ty-nine of the first graduates of Dartmouth entered 
the ministry ; ten years ago the list showed seven hun- 
dred. Up to the year 1857, forty-three per cent, of 
the alumni of Middlebury College were preachers ; 
the proportion varied little from this at Amherst. 
One fourth of the graduates of Brown University have 
become ministers, and nearly one half of the eleven 
hundred sent out by Wesleyan University. Thirty- 
four per cent, of the graduates of ten New England 
colleges previous to 1845 were pastors.^ Out of thirty- 
five thousand alumni of the colleges of the United 
States, thirty years ago, between eight and nine thou- 
sand were ministers of the Gospel. The first college 
west of the Alleghany mountains, Jefferson, numbers 
nearly seventeen hundred alumni ; of whom more than 
half have been preachers. 

^ Sixteenth Report, College Society. 
2 Thirteenth Report, College Society. 



30 THE NEW WEST. 

The colleges nurtured by the College Society have 
trained great numbers of home missionaries. More 
than one third of the alumni of Western Reserve be- 
fore 1868, were pastors. Of the first ninety-four grad- 
uates of Illinois College, forty-five became preachers, 
rendering invaluable service in the West. Wabash 
gave forty-five of the first sixty-five. Marietta sent 
sixty-five from the first one hundred thirteen ; at this 
day her ministers have made a record in more than 
twenty States of the Union. In 1868, Beloit had fur- 
nished fifty-two men from one hundred thirty-four 
graduates. Two hundred fifty churches have been sup- 
plied from this college. Iowa college has given forty 
per cent, of her graduates to the ministerial office. 
The sun never sets upon her sons and daughters en- 
gaged in missionary w^ork.^ The Western colleges, 
aided by the College Society, have already trained 
from seventeen to eighteen hundred pastors.^ The 
Congregational churches west of the eastern line of 
Ohio, comprising only twenty-nine per cent, of the 
whole membership of the country, are now furnishing 
forty-eight per cent, of our candidates for the minis- 
try.^ The six interior States furnish only one candi- 
date less than the six New England States, although 
the latter have twice the church membership of the 
former.* 

Does it need to be inquired whether the average 
Western State university can be relied upon to train 
home missionaries? Michigan University, in 1876, 
with three hundred fifty-two professors of religion 
among more than a thousand students had only nine 

^ Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 284. 

2 Dr. Roy, Cong. Quarterly, January, 1877. 

3 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 
^ President Chapin. 



THE NEW WEST. 31 

candidates for the ministry.-^ In 1872, seven years' 
record of our theoloo-lcal seminaries showed that sev- 
enty-eight per cent, of the students from the West 
came from colleges nourished \yy our College Society.^ 
If the West is left to be supplied with a Christian min- 
istry by State universities, the people will perish by a 
famine of the words of the Lord. Born of no distinc- 
tively Christian purpose, and no self-sacrifice ; not un- 
frequently with instructors who are little imbued with 
the spirit of the Gospel ; subject more or less to politi- 
cal intermeddling, — the State university is not likely 
soon to enter into competition with the Christian col- 
lege for the training of missionaries. Kill out the 
Christian college, and the supply of home and foreign 
missionaries will be cut off. 

Unless the Christian college is built upon the ground 
where it is needed, it fails to do its work. While it is 
true that one live college will make itself felt to the 
ends of the world, it is not true that it will be so 
largely useful at the Antipodes, as it will be to give 
the graduate of the primal college money enough to 
build another school in that strange, wild country, 
where he has located. The divine command — Go 
preach — leads through training schools. But our 
home missionary Secretaries find it difficult to man the 
front ; and the future years are calling loudly as the 
present. " It is the sons of the West, educated on her 
own soil, who must preach the Gospel to the West." ^ 

Poverty in youth is likely to lead a clergyman to 
habits of self-denial, and to adapt him to the average 
man. But the poor young man of the West cannot 

^ Tyler, Prayer for Colleges, rev. ed., p. 282. 
2 Twenty-ninth Report, College Society. 
^ Lyman Beecher. 



32 THE NEW WEST. 

come East to be educated ; and if he does, the East 
may keep hhn. Three fourths of the pupils of our 
country are of slender means, or poor.^ The college 
must be planted in the inexpensive West, near the men 
to be benefited by it. Would a poor widow in New 
England send her son to Colorado to be educated ? It 
is only a little further to send him to England. Our 
fathers sent a few pupils to Oxford and Cambridge, but 
they quickly decided to build a Cambridge at their 
own doors ; and to send beggars to England to raise 
money for their college : and Old England gave it 
most generously. 

" We cannot expect that a university at Brunswick 
or Burlington will diffuse the same healthful glow 
among the inhabitants of Wisconsin and Iowa, as 
among the population closely encircling it. We might 
as well expect that the flowers which bloom in Maine 
or Vermont would sweeten the air of the prairies ; 
that one forest, one mountain range, would purify the 
atmosphere of our entire land. The Western waters 
cannot be navigated by steamers all whose engines are 
kept at the east. Our higher schools must be near to 
the communities which they would attract w^th a mag- 
netic power." ^ 

The rich are few. It is, therefore, not strange that 
the majority of those who enter the most self denying 
service are not from rich families. A widow in Vermont 
reads the life of Harriet Newell, and, having no money 
for missions, she gives her four sons to the service. 
Another woman asks, who among her eleven children 
will preach the Word in foreign lands ; and, when one 
volunteers, she sells her gold beads to buy classical 
books for him. The need of missionaries ten years 

1 Professor Haddock, CoZ^e^e Society Address. 

2 Professor Edwards A. Park, College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 33 

hence should lead us to plant the Christian college 
within reach of self denying Christian families in the 
West. The colleges nourished by the College Society 
have already sent abroad one hundred and twenty-five 
men, and many women, as foreign missionaries.^ This 
is more than Avere sent by Dartmouth, Amherst, Wil- 
liams, and Middlebury, before 1856. 

Colorado College, at Colorado Springs, is more than 
five hundred miles from any other Christian college. 
The three nearest are those noble and needy enter- 
prises, Drury, Washburn, and Doane. Colorado Col- 
lege is further by rail from Doane than it is from An- 
dover to Oberlin ; more distant by rail from Washburn 
than from Vermont University to Hudson's Bay ; as far 
from Drury as from Williams College to Lake Superior. 
If the children of the more than one hundred and 
twenty-five Christian churches in Colorado are ever 
trained for home or foreign missionary service, they 
must have a Christian college in Colorado. No gifts of 
money to foreign shores, or to any other instrumental- 
ity for Christian labor than that of the College Society, 
will supply the men needed for the whole work of the 
Church. Christian colleges must be planted — not too 
remote from each other — in the very neighborhood of 
the young men who desire to bear an honorable part 
in bringing in the reign of God, and who will band to- 
gether to carry the Gospel to every hamlet on plain or 
mountain, and to far countries. The business of rais- 
ing up the men is fundamental to tlie growth of Chris- 
tianity, and the Society which is doing this ought to 
receive the hearty support of our churches. It cer- 
tainly will receive generous gifts from the most thought- 
ful men in our churches ; the more generous, if the 
inconsiderate give little. 

1 Joseph E. Roy, D. D., Congregational Quaiierlg, January, 1877. 
.3 



34 THE NEW WEST. 

It can require only a slight knowledge of the condi- 
tion of the New West, to determine that the founding 
of a Christian college in Colorado is the first thing to 
be done in pushing Christian work in that region. Col- 
orado is sufficiently developed to warrant establishing 
a college ; other localities in the New West will not call 
for similar work for some years. But these are the 
very years in which a home missionary training school 
is needed, in the region where so many new churches 
will be soon founded. The distances are magnificent, 
and if Santa Fe is three hundred fifty miles from Colo- 
rado Colleo:e, it is at least two thousand miles nearer 
than it is to Harvard and Andover ; and it is much 
more likely that the Christian students of Colorado 
Springs will be ready to act as home missionaries in 
Arizona than that Harvard and Andover men will go 
there. It is practically easier to obtain home mission- 
aries from the West than from the East. The Western 
man belongs to a moving family. The grandfather 
lived in Connecticut ; the fiither in Illinois ; the son is 
in Colorado ; the great-grandson will certainly go to 
Arizona, or crowd into Mexico to preach the Gospel ; 
and the chances are that he will be a better missionary 
than if he had been born in Connecticut. 

Colorado College is a thousand miles from any the- 
ological seminary. What shall we do about it? The 
time is not at hand, but it is not distant, when a strong 
theologian must be planted upon the Rocky Mountain 
plateau, to grapple with unbelief as he finds it in the 
New West, and to train young men there for Christian 
enterprise. A student from Holsteinborg in Green- 
land, within the Arctic circle, would not have to travel 
so far to Andover as a student from Colorado Springs. 
A student from Vancouver's Island moving in an air 
Une, will reach Colorado College almost as soon as a 



THE NEW WEST. 35 

Colorado student can reach Chicago Seminary. Some- 
time between now and the perfect reign of Christ, there 
will be opened upon this mountain plateau a fountain 
from which will flow home missionary influences ; and 
the day cannot be put far off, unless the millennium is 
to dawn late in the New West. 

Are there not eitrlitv thousand Mormons to be con- 
verted?^ Is it not likely, also, that there may be a few 
Indians left after the government gets through killing 

1 Mormon separation from civilization has been broken up by the advent 
of the railway and the Gentile. It is only through Christian education that 
the Mormons will be separated from polygamy. The way is now open for 
introducing this instrumentality. A progressive spirit is leading a large 
part of the people to desire education for their children, that they may 
equal their Gentile neighbors. There are no free schools in Utah, and the 
establishment of Christian instruction of advanced grade will win a large 
Mormon patronage. It is at this moment possible by a judicious system to 
introduce Christian teachers of private schools at various points in Utah. 
The way may be thus prepared for free schools within a few years; and 
this territory will be ready to become a State. A comparatively small 
amount of money would go far towards maintaining scores of teachers, who 
would nearly earn a livelihood by tuition. But this work cannot be done 
to the best advantage without means of supplementing the pay of teachers, 
at this time, when the Mormon prejudice is first yielding. 

Rev. Walter M. Barrows is at the present time attempting to establish a 
Christian Academy at Salt Lake. There are persons in Utah who will do 
much toward founding this enterprise. Generous friends have already ap- 
peared in the East. Any one who knows the commercial resources of Salt 
Lake, and of the region of which it is the natural center, must consider the 
future of such an institution as one of great promise. There are already 
twenty-five thousand people gathered here, of whom perha[)s five thousand 
are Gentiles. The ability of the western slope of the Rocky Mountains to 
maihta,in population is very great, and it is only a question of time when 
the Christian College will grow up fi-om the Christian Academy. Those 
{)ersons who invest money in providing Christian instructors for Utah will 
not only do missionary work among the Mormons, but lay the foundations 
for a noble Christian State in the near future. The Presbyterian educa- 
tional work in southern Utah is eminently successful. It will not be long 
before the many sons of Mormon parents will avail themselves of Christian 
schools at their own doors, and some will take advanced studies in Colorado 
College. It is to-(hiy of the utmost importance to establish academical work 
in Utah, and to hasten the time when a Christian College, well endowed, 
will rise near the present site of the Mormon Endowment House. 



36 THE NEW WEST. 

the most vicious ? It will be only fair treatment of the 
Gospel to test its power on the wasting remnant of red 
men, who will for a long time linger in those great cen- 
tral mountain regions. The results already achieved 
justify no small expectation of good to those savage 
tribes in the future. There are, also, at this time thirty 
thousand Spanish-speaking Eomanists in southern Col- 
orado participating in the political life of the nation ; 
and one hundred thousand more in New Mexico voting 
in a Territory, and wondering that they cannot vote as 
a State. And Arizona has a few more. These ele- 
ments are in addition to the usual difficulties incident 
to a border country, — - the wild excesses of new min- 
ing camps, religious indifference and unbelief in village 
and city, the moral disadvantages of sparse farming 
settlements, and the strange life of the " cow-boys." 

It is indeed true, that the power of Christianity — 
what there is of it — is nowhere more fresh and life- 
giving than in the New West. As good society can be 
found at the base of the Rocky Mountains as anywhere 
on the planet. But the Christian people there will 
need constant reinforcement from the East, in order to 
conquer and hold this region. And there is no way in 
which they can be so effectually aided as by the estab- 
lishment of a Christian College. 

Is not Colorado College at this moment an important 
point in Christian strategy ? It is beyond the great 
plains, in the immediate neighborhood of Mormon and 
Indian, and the Mexican element of our Republic, as 
well as in contiguity with regions that will be the front 
of the home missionary field for the next fifty years. 

If our Protestant faith makes less of forms than of 
the interior life, it is more necessary that we emphasize 
the college and a thoughtful Christianity, and plant 



THE NEW WEST. 37 

Christian schools among the Spanish-speaking popula- 
tion of southern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona, 
to train the youth of strange tongue for citizenship in 
a Christian republic. The Church has been praying 
for the foreign mission field. One way in which God 
has answered these prayers, has been by taking a large 
section of the foreign field and planting it close to our 
houses, as if we could look over our garden fences and 
see China, Africa, Rome, and a race of red men crying 
at our back-doors. We little heed their cry, consider- 
ing how much we prayed for them before they became 
so common among us. 

It is now twenty-eight years since a large population 
of Spanish Catholics became a part of our nation, and 
the prevailing church polity of New England has not 
yet so much as looked at them, any more than it has 
sent Christian explorers into the mines of Montana. If 
other denominations have had more mission zeal in 
recent years, we thank God for their energy, enter- 
prise, and Christian patriotism.^ 

Rome in America has nearly ten thousand young 
men in colleges and seminaries to-day, under seven 
hundred fifty professors, Jesuits for the most part ; 
and half a million pupils in schools of a lower grade. 
This work is organized under seven religious orders of 
men, and thirty-six religious orders of women .^ There 
can, then, be no question as to the policy that Rome 
will pursue in the New West. Already the Jesuits are 
stretching out their hands after Protestant children. 

In California, the Romanists have one "sixth of the 
population ; but one quarter of the churches. In 1870 

1 In 1874, there were twelve Methodist churches in Montana, five Pres- 
byterian, three Episcopalian, three Roman Catholic, no Congi-egational, 
and no Baptist. 

2 Vide Murray's History of Roman Catholics in the United States. 



38 THE NEW WEST. 

a State normal school, State university, military acad- 
emy, schools for the higher education under manage- 
ment EjDiscopal, Presbyterian, Methodist, Disciples, and 
Baptist, reported less pupils by a thousand than the 
Catholics in 1876. A hundred and four papal profess- 
ors give instruction in live colleges for young men, and 
two academies for young women. All the colleges and 
academies under distinctively Christian Protestant in- 
fluences had, in 1870, only three tenths as many pupils 
as Romanist schools of the same grade in 1876. It 
need not be said that the papists do not lack for Protes- 
tant patronage. 

The Jesuits are quite ready to educate the New 
West. They have a good basis for operation in South- 
ern Colorado, New Mexico, and Arizona. We need not 
lift a hand to build a Christian college. The gigantic 
machinery of the Society of Jesus is silently getting 
under way at this moment. Protestant children in 
southern Colorado are already falling under the influ- 
ence of papal schools. The Romanists are doing far 
more than all other Christian denominations for educa- 
tion in Colorado. One school has an income of nearly 
six thousand dollars. 

We need to learn of Rome. If Protestant Christian- 
ity has not so much ingenuity as the Jesuitical ; if An- 
glo-Saxon perseverance is not equal to the Roman ; if 
those who love an open Bible are not as ready to put 
money into Christian schools in the New West as our 
papal neighbors, — then the Pope may have the New 
West, and He will certainly take possession of a fair 
share of it. Those who are acquainted with the Jesuit 
policy need not be told that their leading aim is to con- 
trol the future by the present education of youth. 

It ought not to be said that we are asleep, but when 
we wake up we shall know that we have been asleep. 



THE NEW WEST. 39 

We starve and pinch the American Missionary Associ- 
ation, giving httle more than two hundred thousand 
dollars a year towards founding Christian schools and 
planting Christian pulpits among four million freedmen 
in the pit of ignorance and degradation ; we do little 
to sjDcak of among the Celestial pagans on the Pacific 
slope ; and our labor among the Indians is light. But 
our Romish friends are now said to be spending six 
hundred thousand dollars a year among the freedmen, 
among whom they have one hundred and fifty thou- 
sand pupils under priestly schools.^ There are one 
hundred thirty-seven Catholic missionaries and teachers 
among the Indians. We can but commend their zeal, 
which has been so signally manifested in the mission- 
ary work of all ages ; and which illumined the dark 
forest abodes of the red men in the early history ot' 
America. Protestant service among the Indians has, 
indeed, proved a great power ; and with a new policy 
on the part of the government, vastly more will be 
achieved within a few years for the elevation of the 
race. It will greatly facilitate a forward movement in 
missions amoni»: the Indians, if a strono- Christian col- 
le^e is established in Colorado in near neii>-hborhood to 
the large Indian population of the New West. 

Practically we do not do much missionary work 
among the Spanish-speaking people of America. Mex- 
ico has not been long open to the Gospel message. 
Presbyterian and Methodist missions, and the labors of 
the American Board in that country, are eminently suc- 
cessful ; but comparatively little is attempted among 
the eight or nine millions of our neighboring State, 
although thousands are throwing off the papal yoke, 
and the people are eager for the Word of life. In all 
the years in which New Mexico — three times as large 

^ James Powell, D. D. 



40 THE NEW WEST. 

as New England — has been a portion of our domestic 
heritage, we have hardly intimated to her people — a 
fraction of whom are sun- worshippers, as well as good 
Catholics, — that they are any part of a Protestant or 
Christian nation. The Presbyterians and Methodists 
have opened school and mission work at two or three 
points in New Mexico, and an Episcopal bishop is now 
appointed to visit that country and Arizona. Other 
denominations ignore the work altogether. 

We shall do well to learn of Rome, which proceeds 
calmly in carrying forward plans, century after cen- 
tury, for the conversion of the nations. We may wisely 
imitate them in their zeal for education, at least so far 
as to furnish a Christian college for Protestant children 
in Colorado. Unless our Christianity has faith to pre- 
pare the way for the millennium in Spanish America, 
whose faith will do it ? Shall New England Christians 
wait till Old England, or even Micronesia, sends mis- 
sionaries to New Mexico ? Is it not possible to train a 
few teachers and preachers in a Christian college near 
the work to be done ? It will be more easy to secure 
men than from the East. If the Spirit of the Lord de- 
scends with tongues of fire on a Christian college in the 
New West, it is likely that one of the tongues will be 
Spanish. 

There are, among the Spanish-speaking people of 
America, persons of great intelligence, culture, and lib- 
erality of spirit. They are Catholics, but they desire 
a reformation. They welcome Protestant ideas and 
any instrumentality that will elevate their people. 
There is no doubt that the school work which the au- 
thorities of Colorado College are now organizing for 
the Spanish-speaking population will have a good re- 
ception. It certainly will, if it be carried out with 
practical wisdom and the spirit of Christ, without con- 



THE NEW WEST. 41 

fcroversy. It is absolutely certain that if, within a 
few years, we can find a few Spanish-speaking youth, 
who will obtain a Christian education and then give 
themselves to mission work, we can do good work for 
Mexico ) and between now and the dawn of perfect 
light in that country, the Catholic colleges will become 
seminaries for the study of the Bible. Fourteen out of 
nineteen colleges now at Oxford were founded by Pa- 
pists. A religious reformation in Mexico can be best 
aided through Spanish-speaking young men from the 
United States, trained in a Christian college in their 
own neighborhood, founded by Christian men deter- 
mined to carry the world for Christ at the earliest pos- 
sible moment. These young men have it in them to 
reform their country. There are already native help- 
ers of apostolic zeal in Mexico. But some of them at 
least should be educated in a Christian college. 

The Denver and Rio Grande Railway, already a de- 
cided success as a business enterprise, now stretching 
far south, is chartered to the southern line of New 
Mexico and is aiming for the city of Mexico, which can 
be reached by easy grades ; a line sure of large profits 
by an immense business. This railway is now awaken- 
ing the drowsy Spanish American people ; and Chris- 
tian men of enterprise ought to enter, at this very 
moment, upon the work of throwing into these Mex- 
ican villages positive religious influences, which will at 
least seize upon the most vigorous young men amono- 
them, and prepare them for citizenship in a Christian 
country. 

If we send the Gospel to Old Spain, let us send it to 
New Spain within our own borders. That the New is 
not unlike the Old is easy to believe. We have medi- 
aeval Spanish Catholicism voting in Southern Colorado 
In the "Atlantic Monthly" for June, 1877, " H. H." 
gives some account of these dwellers in adobe houses : — • 



42 THE NEW WEST. 

" There still exists among the Roman Catholic Mexicans of 
Southern Colorado an order like the old order of the Flagel- 
lants. Every spring, in Easter week, several of the young 
men belonging to tliis order inflict on themselves dreadful 
tortures in public. The congregations to which they belong 
gather about them, follow them from honse to house, and spot 
to spot, and kneel down around them, singing and praying 
and continually exciting their frenzy to a higher pitch. 
Sometimes they have also drums and fifes, adding a melan- 
choly and discordant music to the harrowing spectacle. The 
priests ostensibly disapprove of these proceedings, and never 
appear in public with the Penitentes. But the impression 
among outsiders is very strong that they do secretly counten- 
ance and stimulate them, thinking that the excitement tends 
to strengthen the hold of the church on the people's minds. 
It is incredible that such superstitions can still be alive and in 
force in our country. Some of the tortures these poor crea- 
tures undergo are almost too terrible to tell. One of the most 
common is to make in the small of the back an arrow-shaped 
incision ; then fastening into each end of a long scarf the 
prickly cactus stems, they scourge themselves with them, 
throwing the scarf ends first over one shoulder, then over the 
other, each time hitting the bleeding wound. The ' leaves of 
the yucca or " soap weed " are pounded into a pulp and made 
into a sort of sponge, acrid and inflaming ; a man carries this 
along in a pail of water, and every now and then wets the 
wound with it to increase the pain and the flowing of the blood. 
Almost naked, lashing themselves in this way, they run wildly 
over the plains. Their blood drops on the ground at every 
step. A fanatical ecstasy possesses them ; they seem to feel 
no fatigue ; for three days and two nights they have been 
known to keep it up without rest. 

" Others bind the thick lobes of the prickly pear under 
their arms and on the soles of their feet, and run for miles, 
swinging their arms and stamping their feet violently on the 
ground. To one who knows Avhat suffering there is from 
even one of these tiny little spines imbedded in the flesh, it 
seems past belief that a man could voluntarily endure such 
pain. 



THE NEW WEST. 43 

" Others lie on the thresholds of the churches, and every 
person who enters the church is asked to step with his full 
weight on their bodies. Others carry about heavy wooden 
crosses (eight or ten feet long), so heavy that a man can 
hardly lift them. Some crawl on their hands and knees, 
dragging the cross. Crowds of women accompany them, 
singing and shouting. When the penitent throws himself 
on the ground, they la}" the cross on his breast and fall on 
their knees around him and pray ; then they rise up, place 
the cross on his back again, and take up the dreadful journey. 
Now and then the band will enter a house and eat a little 
food, which in all good CJatholic houses is kept ready for 
them. After a short rest the leader gives a signal, and they 
set out again. 

" Last spring, in the eighteen hundred and seventy-sixth 
year of our merciful Lord, four of these young men died from 
the effects of their tortures. One of them, after running for 
three days under the cactus scourge, lay all Easter night 
naked upon the threshold of a church. Easter morning he 
Avas found there dead." 

There are some who would pity these people if they 
lived -on some distant continent ; but as it is, they 
think little more about them than they do about the 
pagan temples the Chinese are erecting in America, or 
the ignorance of millions of blacks deaf with the crack 
of the slave whip. For the most part, however, we 
believe, that, where the facts are known, men have 
pity upon their own neighbors. That a pure Gospel' 
should .be preached in Mexico, and in New Mexico, is a 
duty near at hand. In fulfilling this duty, it is a prac- 
tical step to aid in founding Colorado College ; which 
is not far distant ; and which is already making defi- 
nite plans to enter on this missionary field by such in- 
strumentalities as fjxll wibhin its proper province, — 
preparing the Avay for teachers and preachers, both 
American and of Spanish descent, and training the 
men for their work. 



44 THE NEW WEST. 

Colorado College is not only upon the very verge of 
the frontier, in the first battle line of the Home Mis- 
sionary Society, but there is no college in the country 
so near foreign missionary service as this, with thirty 
thousand neighbors in the same State, speaking a for- 
eign tongue, practicing the rites of a strange religion, 
with lives little guided by the principles of the Gos- 
pel ; and in territory a little farther south — made near 
by business connections, — a hundred thousand more, 
clamoring to become a State. Let us put money into 
foreign missions, but not forget this foreign fragment 
of our own Republic. 

There are men now studying for the Christian 
ministry, in Colorado College. Is there not money 
enough to put a strong home missionary force into 
these papal sections ? Are the sons, of the Pilgrims 
lacking in enterprise ? Providence opens the door ; 
do we fumble in our pockets, think we cannot afford to 
pay the fee, or send the money somewhere else, and 
keep out of the best missionary work in the country 
at the very moment in which our labor will tell the 
most for our Master ? 

" Civilization must go as yeast, not as bread," says 
an eminent preacher. Plant a Christian college in the 
New West, and it will raise new life in an effete civili- 
zation, where men plow with crooked sticks, thresh 
wheat by driving goats over it, and put their teeth to 
a stone in place of the bread of life. There is just as 
good prospect that the Spanish-speaking people of 
America will be prepared for Christian citizenship as 
that the promises of God will be fulfilled. We shall 
not always hear men asserting that Mexico has had 
fifty-six revolutions in fifty-six years.^ If there is in 
America a Christian republic, it ought to carry the 

1 Rev. Arthur Mitchell, in S. S. World. 



THE NEW WEST. 45 

Bible into Mexico, and erect the Christian school. The 
essential instrument is the one God has always used, — 
Christian education to kindle the holy fire. Has the 
fire so far gone out that we cannot illuminate the dark 
corners of our own land ? We send men to every part 
of the world, and they prove great powers for the re- 
generation of nations. Cannot all the Christian force 
in America redeem America ? May we not at the least 
establish a small Christian college, which will grow into 
a great power for good at the front of our home mission 
field, and in the immediate neighborhood of foreign 
populations needing the Gospel ? 

In every age of history God has used young men in 
their school days for achieving great results. The early 
prophets received instruction. Paul was a learned man ; 
the church Fathers were good students. The enthusi- 
asm of their youth was tempered by careful studies, and 
they became men fit to sit on thrones in the kingdom 
of our. Lord. D'Aubigne affirms that the German Refor- 
mation was born in the universities. The English Ref- 
ormation W'as cradled in colleges, and nurtured by 
scholarly men. Ranke's " History of the Popes" states 
that Austria was at one time nearly Protestant, but the 
Jesuits obtained a hold in the universities and swung 
back the nation to papal influence. The most vital 
movements of the modern world have begun in Chris- 
tian seminaries. 

John Wesley — who was God's instrument to set 
strongminded and consecrated shoemakers and black- 
smiths to preaching the Gospel to the poor — had also 
the discretion to remain ten years in his Oxford fellow- 
ship, that he might fire the young men with his own 
spirit. " Is it not," he asked, '' a more extensive bene- 
fit to sweeten the fountain than to purify a particular 



46 THE NEW WEST. 

stream ? " The American Home Missionary Society 
began in the conversations of Anclover students. May 
not the students of some Western college, obscure as 
Andover was once, inaugurate new enterprises for the 
Master ? The American Board of Foreign Missions was 
begun by the students of a very small college, praying 
under a haystack. May not the students of a feeble 
college, who pray nightly under the shadow of the 
Colorado mountains, achieve pomething honorable ? 
Ever}^ Christian college ought to become a fountain of 
holy fire, illuminating the third part of a continent ; 
and it will, if it is sufficiently endowed with the money 
and the prayers of God's people, and the Power from 
on High. George Fox said that every true Quaker 
ought to shake the country for ten miles around hi m. 
If Colorado College is true to its position and to its 
consecration, is it too much to hope that it will make 
itself felt, not only in Colorado, but in the region south 
and southwest of it, and that it will aid in preparing 
the way of our Lord ? 

Agesilaus the Great, being asked how far the bounds 
of Sparta extended, shook his spear, and answered, 
'' As far as this will reach." The true heritage of the 
Church depends on how far its spear can penetrate. 
There must be an enterprising, aggressive policy. 
There are Christians not a few, who, in respect to re- 
ligious work, never heard of Idaho and Montana. New 
Mexico and Arizona. And their knowledge of Ne- 
vada, Utah, and Wyoming is little derived from new 
church records. Dr. Wayland says of Judson : " He 
believed that a bold and aggressive polioy was de- 
manded of the conductors of missionary efforts, and 
that no other course will either arouse or keep alive 
the benevolent spirit of the churches." 

The American Board has taken a bold, aggressive 



THE NEW WEST. 47 

policy. This policy has money in it. Any other policy 
than this will be perpetually poor. The Presbyterian 
Church is at this day in the front of home missionary 
enterprise. They are doing apostolic work. They 
are not excelled by the Methodists, who push with 
great vigor in their fir western missions. The Epis- 
copal Church is also very active in its missionary la- 
bors in the New West. The Baptists and the Congre- 
gationalists appear to have little money and few men 
at the front.^ The men on the border are usually 

1 The lack of enterpi-ise has been in the donors and not in any Home 
Missionary Society. The Congregational churches have not furnished the 
means of advancing their work on the border. The Anferican Home Mis- 
sionary Society would have pushed the'work if money had been at hand. 
It is now nearly twenty years since Colorado was opened, and thei-e has 
been no general missionary of the American Home Missionary Society lo- 
cated in the New West, save that a few months' labor has been given re- 
cently by two men. Appreciating most heartily the work of the Society in 
its wide field, and its beneficent results in Colorado, it is suitable also to 
urge the claims of the New West for more men, and especially for a mis- 
sionary Superintendent. The population of Colorado is a hundi-ed and 
forty thousnnd, and there is a population of more than half a million more 
in the neighboring territories, among whom a Superintendent would be 
likely to explore. There are only eleven Congregational churches in Colo- 
rado to-day, three of which are practically dead and a fourtli of doubtful 
life. In an economical point of view, it would have prevented loss, if there 
had been a Superintendent in the field. Ten years ago there were four 
Congregational pastors; now that the population has increased by a hun- 
dred thousan<l, we have five ; the Home Missionary Society aids three of 
those now upon the ground, the same number as ten years ago. The So- 
ciety has averaged four men. There are two self-supporting churches. 
Every other leading denomination has been represented by local superin- 
tendents. " The Presbyterians were not so strong as the Congregationalists 
ten years ago, but they now have m.ore than three times the force in the 
State, and are pushing energetically in other parts of the New West. The 
kingdom is to the strongest. The kingdom is to a bold, aggressive policy, 
which is less likely to lack means than the more timid. If Congregational 
churches desire to do more -vVork in the New West, let them take decisive 
action through the contribution box. 

A comparison of the population of the districts of western Superintend- 
ents of the American Home Missionary Society with the population of the 
New West, will justify the appointment of a Superintendent for this region. 
And if the ])opulation of the United States be divided by the number of 



48 THE NEW WEST. 

clear cut and of decided character, and there is some- 
times a lack of comity in carrying on church work ; 
but upon the whole the Christian people stand shoul- 
der to shoulder in earnest work, and make common 
cause for the Master.^ 

The Christian people of Colorado entertain a strong 
conviction that trained bands must be sent into every 
part of the New West, in the early deve;lopment of 
the regions beyond. Without extended missionary 
journeys, the highway will not be opened for the King 
of Glory to come in. But the country cannot be pen- 
etrated everj^where by preaching tours, unless men 
adapted to the work are trained upon the field. This 
is evident from the fact that there are so many re- 
gions that have not been explored by men from the 
East. The plan of the American Board is to establish 
a few churches, and then a training school as a centre 
of light and influence. This has been substantially the 
course on the home missionary field. No other plan 
will do the work ; first a handful of churches, then the 



missionaries employed by our Home Missionary Society, it will be seen that 
the number of missionaries in the New West ought to be increased, if the 
distribution is pro rata. That the New West has been neglected by Con- 
gregationalists is not creditable to the missionary enterprise of the denomi- 
nation. Although it be true that the need of work is apparent in Wiscon- 
sin, we should not hide our eyes from the woes of Wyoming. In this age, 
when Asia is near us, we ought not to' think of Arizona, and the mines in 
Utah, as far off. Arizona now needs the Gospel as much as Colorado did 
ten years ago, having as large a population as Colorado had then. The 
wants of the New West are as urgent as those of districts nearer, and they 
should not be neglected. Nothing would make the managers of the Amer- 
ican Home Missionary Society so glad as the sight of money by which to 
advance this work. The patrons who know so well the noble record of this 
Society will certainly give more largely when they know the imperative 
necessity for an increased bount\'. 

1 I wish to bear testimony to the good work of Rev. Sheldon Jackson, 
the Presbyterian Superintendent of Missions. That he has sometimes erred 
in judgment in the formation of churches where Congregationalists have 



THE NEW WEST. 49 

Christian College. This course is absolutely essential 
in the New West. Professor Stowe compares the 
Christian College to an engine, so essential is it to 
move the machinery of a Christian civilization. Padclle 
wheels are of no use without the engine. The Church 
will stand still without the engine.^ And the enofine 
to do the work of the New West will do no srood if 

o 

set up on the banks of the Connecticut. 

There are great numbers of villages in the New West 
where there is a liquor saloon for every one or two hun- 
dred inhabitants, and one or more dance-houses to 
every five hundred, and preaching of the Gospel at very 
rare intervals. Apply this rule to any eastern village, 
and the result will be easily forecast. The barbarians 
who destroyed Rome were multiplying and growing 
strong in the North of Europe, during the same centu- 

had a right of way, he will, no doul)t, admit. That he has, however, 
proved to be one of the most energetic, self-denying, useful men in the far 
West is, clear to unprejudiced Congregationalists upon the ground. They 
would be very glad to have a Superintendent half so eflicient.- If he 
sometimes trenches upon ground sufficiently occupied by others, the most 
of his work is in building upon no other man's foundation, pushing into 
the open field where his work is truly apostolic. Mount Franklin, in the 
edge of the open Polar Sea is nearer New York than the distani'e Dr. 
Jackson travels in passing from the southeastern corner of his parish to 
Sitka in the northwest. When he mounts his horse at Denver, he is not 
so far from the equator as he is from the most neglected part of his dis- 
trict. It is needless to say that this man, inured to hardship and more en- 
terprising than any commercial traveller, looks carefully after every part 
of the work committed to him, and that there will be less need of appoint- 
ing any Congregational Superintendent after a few years. As it is now, 
however, the field is still ample, and its needs are pressing. There are, in 
all this re<>-ion, so many communities destitute of the Gospel, that they will 
not be easily supplied by the united labors of all Christian men engaged in 
this service. It is impossible for men in the East to appreciate the elements 
of evil in the far West, and the crying necessity for planting the principles 
of the Gospel in tliese new States. If a Congregational Superintendent is 
set to the work, he will be warmly welcomed by the Presbyterian brethren, 
and by none more warmly than by Sheldon Jackson. 
^ College Society Address. 



50 THE NEW WEST, 

ries in which the Romans were rolling up wealth on the 
shores of the Tiber. We can, if we will, rear ignorant 
and powerful States in our wild Western country ; and 
some day they will destroy the nation. 

This business of planting Christian churches and the 
Christian College must be done at once \ they cannot 
wait one for the other, " any more than one leg can 
be waiting for the other, when a man is on a rapid 
march." ^ 

1 Professor Stovve, College Society Address. 



IV. 

The American College and Education Society, which 
has adopted Colorado College as one of its beneficiaries, 
needs the gifts of Christian men and women for its up- 
building. This Society has a noble history, and merits 
the confidence of the Christian public. It has been 
already honored by the churches in being made the 
channel through which they have given nearly a mil- 
lion and one fourth for colleges, and half a million dol- 
lars more than that to aid young men. The amount 
invested is small, the result large, — aid rendered seven- 
teen Christian colleges and seminaries, and between 
six and seven thousand young men assisted in their 
preparation for the ministry. 

" Each institution which applies for aid is subjected to 
rigid examination as to its origin and location, the princi- 
ples upon which it was founded, its means of self-support, 
its relations to similar institutions, and its prospective 
usefulness." ^ The refusal of the Society, based on good 
reasons, to indorse a Western college, hinders the Chris- 
tian public from being imposed upon. It aids no col- 
lege excejDt under conditions which careful business men, 
acting with extreme caution, consider to be wise. As 
a rule no Eastern money goes into buildings. The 
College must be begun without the aid of the Society ; 
it must territorially occupy a sufficient field, without 
near neighbors. The College is pledged to maintain for- 
ever a Christian character and influence in considera- 
tion of the aid rendered. Aid is continued long enough 

1 Fifth Report; Collec/e Society. 



62 THE NEW WEST. 

to put the College into such a condition as will insure 
an honorable future, if the management of its affairs 
continues to commend it to the Christian public. The 
colleges under the care of the Society, had, in 1872, 
increased their net resources from three hundred thou- 
sand to three millions of dollars. The plans of the 
Society ^' admit of neither waste nor failure. It takes 
up no doubtful institution. It leaves none half able to 
take care of itself. Its cooperation is pledge of char- 
acter and success." ^ No worthy institution is pre- 
maturely abandoned, any more than wise men would 
leave an arch without a key-stone, or a temple without 
a roof.^ 

We submit that this work is not second in .impor- 
tance to any in the country, and that it ought to re- 
ceive the hearty and systematic support of all our 
churches and private Christians. And we are confident 
that, so far as the facts are known, Christian men will 
delight to use this Society in doing good. Many have 
not given much thought to it. and, therefore, little 
money to it. If they once weigh the work, they will 
be glad to give liberally through this channel. The 
establishment of any one college, however important, is 
not any considerable part of its work. It is making a 
chain of them in the West. Without the sound of ham- 
mer to attract the attention of the world, it is silently 
building temples of Christian learning, whose glory will 
appear in after ages. This Society can, says Dr. Hop- 
kins,^ " appeal only to thoughtful men of large views, 
and willing to wait. It is the glory and hope of the 
country that there are in it so many such men who 
can be thus appealed to. In my judgment, the coun- 

1 Thirtieth Report, College Society. 

2 Sixteenth Report, College Society. 
8 College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 53 

try has no greater benefactors than those who have 
thus aided in erecting " these fortresses of Christianity 
and civilization, so that the two niav march on tog;ether 
and take secure possession of the hind. I know of no 
better use of money than to secure instruction for all 
time in some great branch of study that shall enter in 
as a part of the best system that can be devised for 
traininsi: men. Nothino; on earth is so hio-h as man, 
and the grandest work we can do, and the best for the 
country, is to lift him up to a higher manhood." 

Colorado Colleo;e has had the fortune not uncom- 
monly incident to the beginning of important enter- 
prises. The school was opened in 1874, under a very 
enthusiastic, hard-working financial agent, and first one 
excellent teacher, then another. It was then suspended; 
and it lived only in the prayers and hopes of a handful 
of Christian people. This was the first endowment, the 
prayers of God's people. By the timely gifts of a few 
men in Massachusetts, who were also praying for the 
coming of the divine kingdom, new life was put into 
the work. 

The Colorado Springs Company has made a royal 
gift of more than fifty acres of their best land to the 
College, and they reserve forty acres more to be given 
when a certain endowment is secured. The land is in 
part for" the campus, but enough may be sold for the 
endowment to net from twenty to twenty-five thousand 
dollars. What has been already done by the Colorado 
Springs people, in the land and in a building subscrip- 
tion, falls little short of fifty thousand dollars. The 
townspeople — with one generous friend in Chicago — 
are erecting a stone structure, which when completed 
will be one of the most comely and convenient college 
buildings in the country. It will be of a pink volcanic 



54 THE NEW WEST. 

limestone, with white trimmings. The central portion 
was begun upon the Fourth of- July, 1877, and it will 
be completed before the Fall Term of 1878. The re- 
mainder of the building will be erected as soon as the 
wants of the pupils require it. The most careful and 
most enterprising business men in the State are active 
members of the board of trustees. The grade of stud- 
ies is equal to that in the best eastern colleges. The 
professors engaged in teaching, or preparing to give 
instruction in some specialty, are eminent for scholar- 
ship, as well as men of earnest Christian life. Young 
men and women from all the resrion are entering; the 
classes, and the needs are pressing for additional facil- 
ities for giving instruction. 

There are twenty-five thousand children of school age 
in Colorado, and they need a Christian college.^ In that 
part of the State south of the Divide — an upland ridge 
that makes out eastward from the mountains a little 
south of Denver, — a population, probably numbering 
seventy thousand, has no public school of high school 
grade, according to the Eastern standard. They need 
the advantages offered by the Preparatory Department 
of Colorado College. The public schools are, however, 
rapidly improving, and several schools that now rise 
little above grammar grade, will soon be in condition to 
fit pupils for college. The Episcopalians have a board- 
ing-school of high school grade for boys at Golden, and 
for girls at Denver. The State University has recently 
opened with a Normal Department, at Boulder, a hun- 
dred miles north of Colorado College. The Christian 
people of the State will cooperate with this work in 
in every way possible. They are, however, very clear 
m the conviction and expression that there must be a 

■^ There are as many more in New Mexico; and they need the influences 
that will flow out from a Christian coUesre. 



THE NEW WEST. 55 

college under distinctively Christian influence. There 
is a strong feeling in favor of uniting upon one college. 
The policy of the American College and Education 
Society is recognized as broad and liberal, and its col- 
leges as unsectarian as any in the country .-"^ Colorado 
College, in its management, commends itself to leading 
Christian men of different denominations iu the State, 
and it will receive their hearty support. Its aim is to 
meet the wants of all Christian families, and to merit 
the patronage of the more than six score Christian 
churches, for the higher education of their children. 

^ The unsectarian policy of this Society is shown by a brief extract from 
a valuable paper published by the honored Secretary of the Society in the 
Congregaiionalist, February 6, 1878: — 

" The American Education Society, orf:fanized sixty-tino years ago, and which lias 
done a larger work in this department, probably, than any other among us, has been 
unsectarian from the beginning unto this day. Though its funds and its students are 
drawn chiefly from Congregational sources, there has never been a j'ear since its origin 
that tt has not had upon its lists young men of other denominations — Baptists, jNIetho- 
dists, Presbj'terians, German iieformed, Lutherans, etc. A young man was graduated 
from Amherst College last summer, the son of a Methodist minister, himself preparing 
to be a Methodist minister, and known to be so, who was helped through his whole col- 
lege course by this Society. Nor was this a strange and isolated case. There are sev- 
eral hundreds of similar cases. Rev. Baron Stow, U. D., one of the more prominent 
Baptist ministers of the country, now deceased, was aided through his education by tljis 
Society. Heidelberg College, Ohio, is a German Reformed institution. But because 
the religious body to which it belonged was not rich, the American Education Society, 
oetween thirt\- and forty ^-ears ago, took it upon its list, and has continued to this day 
to help young men tliere needing assistance in their studies for the ministry. This was 
a purely charitable, Christian work, from which no financial return, or denominational 
return, has ever been expected. In other words, the Society has been concerned in 
raising up thoroughly-educated ministers, without stopping anxiously to inquire 
whether they should turn out Congregational ministers, or should be of some other 
religious order." 

The same catholicity of spirit has manifested itself in the collegiate de- 
partment of the Society. Presbyterian and Lutheran colleges have been 
aided by this Society. If others have not shared its bounty, it has been 
because they have not sought it. And, in accord with this breadth of 
Christian benevolence, the colleges built up by this Society have made it a 
point to place the representatives of different denominations upon boards 
of trust and in chairs of instruction. It is a part of their working theory 
that a liberal policy is more likely to win the respect of thoughtful men and 
result in building up colleges which will meet the wants of the public, than 
if a narrow sectarian course is pursued. 



It cannot be safely affirmed that it is too early to 
plant a college in the New West, since we are never 
weary of boasting that Harvard College was begun 
when there were only from twenty to thirty houses in 
Boston. We glory in the men who said that they could 
" not subsist without a college," when they had not 
more than twenty-five beginnings of towns in Massa- 
chusetts. We cannot " subsist without a college " 
in Colorado. Thirty-nine years after Harvard was 
founded, the population of all New England was only 
thirty-nine per cent, of the present population of Col- 
orado ; and the population of all the colonies was only 
twenty-six per cent, of the population of the New 
West. If our fathers could '' not subsist without a col- 
lege," Colorado has nearly three times the need Massa- 
chusetts had of Harvard forty years after it was 
founded ; and the New West to-day has four times as 
much need of a Christian college as all the colonies 
had when Harvard was two score years old. The only 
way for Colorado and the New West to found a Chris- 
tian college is to do as the men of Massachusetts did 
for Harvard. They went to England to beg money, 
and the Englishmen gave it. To-day the New West is 
a beggar at the doors of those who are now reaping 
the benefit of English benefactions two hundred years 
ago. Let gratitude for the past take substantial shape 
nt this hour in planting Colorado College. 

Harvard College was established only eighteen years 



THE NEW WEST. 57 

after the landing at Plymouth, and six years after the 
founding of Boston. Colorado has been settled more 
than eighteen years. Massachusetts had a college be- 
fore it had a grammar school. It was eleven 3'ears 
after the college began that provision was made for 
grammar schools to fit pupils for the university. 

Yale College was founded when the population of 
Connecticut was only twenty-one per cent, of the pres- 
ent population of Colprado, and the population of Mas- 
sachusetts was only one half that of Colorado. But 
those wise men said they must have another college, 
and they went to England begging ; and the men who 
had grown up under the shadows of Oxford and Cam- 
bridge gave them money. Colorado needs a college 
five times as much as Connecticut did Yale at the time 
it was begun. For nineteen years Yale College had 
no building of its own. Colorado College has already, 
shown energy enough to erect a wooden building and 
outgrow it, and the people on the ground are, at this 
moment, expending more than ten thousand dollars on 
the main block of a beautiful building for the infant 
colleo;e. 

Yale College was begun by the gathering of a hand- 
ful of books by a few pastors, who desired to perpetu- 
ate an educated ministry. Dartmouth was a charity 
school established in the woods. Amherst not long 
since had a senior class of two. Those men are wise — 
the founders of a noble Christian influence to be per- 
petuated as long as the earth wheels around the sun — 
who give the money needful to establish the feeble 
beginnings of those Christian colleges fostered by the 
American College and Education Society. 

The fathers of New Eno-land thouo-ht it best to 
found colleges when the population was sparse, and 
when the people were poor ; and they did it with little 



58 THE NEW WEST. 

idea of the future growth of the nation. The Massa- 
chusetts Bay men decided that the popnhition was 
never likely to be very dense west of Newton. The 
founders of Lynn exploring ten or fifteen miles, doubted 
whether the country was good for anything further 
west than that. I suspect that they loved the sea, and 
deemed life of no value out of the sight and the sound 
of it. But they wanted a college ; and Old England 
said they ought to have one, and paid cash down on 
the words. We go to men, to-day, who believe that 
our country is likely to be settled west of Newton ; 
and they believe in the manifest destiny of the nation ; 
and they know that the New West will have a large 
population in the near future ; and they know that the 
planting of a Christian college is the only possible 
power by which to fortify a Christian stronghold in 
^that region, — and they will give most generously the 
small amount that is needed in these first years of Col- 
orado College. 

The extent to which our early colleges depended on 
the aid of the mother country is not commonly known 
by those who refuse to give to a college two thousand 
miles west of them, although they are themselves in- 
debted to men three thousand miles east of them for 
the higher education which now illuminates the path- 
way of their children. It would be possible to fill 
pages with the record. The name of Thomas Hollis is 
not less honorable than that of the scholars who de- 
rived advantage from his princely gifts. The worship- 
pers in the chapel built by Madam Holden, were be- 
holden to her as truly as to the preacher. Hugh Peters 
did valiant service for Harvard Colleo-e as he did for 
Cromwell. William Pennoyer is not in itself a name to 
attract notice ; but he has been aiding poor students at 
Harvard for more than two hundred years, as if he 



THE NEW WEST. 59 

were living in Cambridge, century after century, and 
dealing out money to help worth}'' young men through 
college. When Lady Moulson gave a hundred pounds 
to this college over sea, she purchased for herself the 
gratitude of students during two hundred thirty years 
past, and thousands of years to come. Henry Henley, 
of Dorsetshire, might have given twenty-seven pounds 
for a gravestone, and it would have crumbled ; but his 
name is now read and honored, after two hundred 
years, by most scholarly men in America, and it will 
be transmitted till the world grows old, and Harvard 
Square makes room for Mount Auburn. 

The first printing press of America, north of Mex- 
ico, was the gift of certain gentlemen in Amsterdam to 
Harvard College ; and Joseph Glover, of England, gave 
the type. 

Very few persons know that Elihu Yale was Gov- 
ernor of the East India Company, but there is no part 
of the civilized world that fails to honor him for his gifts 
to the college in New Haven. Among the most pre- 
cious gifts, to this college in the wilderness, were books 
from Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Richard Steele, Rev. Mat- 
thew Henry, Dr. Isaac Watts, Bishop Berkley, John 
Erskine, and other eminent men. 

The College of New Jersey obtained very large sums 
in England, beyond all expectation of the parties in- 
terested; The treasurer's books are lost, but President 
Davies collected in one visit twelve hundred pounds. 

Dr. Wheelock, of Dartmouth, obtained funds from 
the Prince of Orange, and officials in high station in 
the Netherlands. The Earl of Dartmouth, and other 
Englishmen, took the deepest interest in his work, and 
gave largely. 

Our colleges have been from the beginning a set of 
learned bego-ars. There is a Brotherhood of Mendi- 



60 THE NEW WEST. 

cants at this time in America, hailing from the West, 
pleading at the doors of the rich and the large-hearted 
in the East. My friend Dr. Morrison, of Drury, says, 
" Do not call us Presidents, but Beggars, — College 
Beggars." 

The Lord of Hosts is not weary of hearing the pite- 
ous cry of beggars on the earth. We are all suppliants. 
God give us what we need, and let us turn no deaf ear 
to any who come to us as we go to Him, Christ is not 
impatient of perpetual prayers. Dr. Kirk loved to be 
called upon by Christ in the person of his poor. As a 
matter of honor, let us at the least be patient if a col- 
lege beggar rings the door-bell, and asks us to do for 
some Western college what our ancestors asked Old 
EnglanH to do for them. 

There is a perpetual law of increase, which puts 
great dignity upon small gifts to a worthy institution 
of learning. A handful of poor students gathered in a 
barn at Cambridge, and the University has flourished 
century after century ; lines of kings have reigned a 
little while and given place to others, but the line of 
scholars, earnestly searching for truth and nobly con- 
tendino- for it, has not failed, nor will until the brine of 
British seas ceases to be salt. When a university is 
once rooted, if it has in its own character the right to 
live, it is little more likely to be torn up than the 
Church of the living God. 

" Every founded institution, especially every one 
which is founded on a principle and not on a tradition, 
which holds an idea within it, and does not simply 
shelter an interest, shows a tendency to grow; to be- 
come developed from a less to a larger, and to grow 
compact aud copious with years. If it be reared to 
consult mere commercial or political advantage, this 



THE NEW Wt:ST. 61 

may not be. If it be founded to gratify pride, to put 
the crown upon personal ambition, or even to subserve 
the mere convenience of society, tliis will not be. But 
if it be founded on a permanent demand of human 
nature itself, and be intrinsically adapted to that, this 
tendency is as certain as that of the date-fruit to grow 
into a palm, and will be as permanent as the fitness of 
the institution to accomplish its ends. And in no case 
is this exemplified more fully than in that of the Col- 
leo;e." ^ 

Princeton College would not, however, have received 
the munificent gifts wliich have made her so rich in 
recent years, if she had not had a definite beginning in 
a log-hut a hundred and forty years ago.^ For more 
than a hundred years the College was poor, a charity 
fund of twelve thousand dollars being its only endow- 
ment. If the Christian people of the East will put in 
the foundations of a Christian College in the New West, 
it will be in position to receive benefit from the law of 
increase, and the little wooden building where the stu- 
dents now meet will become historic. 

The Congregational churches in Colorado are poor ; 
but they give ibr Christian purposes on a scale of gen- 
erosity quite unknown by the average cliurch member 
in the east. There are not more than one or two men 
of property enrolled in the membership, and they are 
heroic in bearing heavy burdens and aiding every good 
cause. There are no Christian churches of any denom- 
ination in the New West which do not have a severe 
struggle in carrying on their work. Very few churches 

1 R. S. Storrs, LL. D., College Society Addres^s. 

2 The learned historian of the College of New Jersey may deny Prin(;e- 
ton's connection with the logs, — and most likely he is right, — but that hut 
twenty feet square has a place in the popular imagination ; and it will be as 
hard for him to remove it from the history of this revered college, as it is 
to displace AVilliam Tell from the minds of men. 



62 THE NEW WEST. 

are self-sustaining. There is no denomination upon the 
ground able to build up a college without Eastern aid. 
All will hail with gladness any gifts which will make it 
possible for the poor to educate their children in Col^ 
orado, and to train the men needed for this vast mis- 
sion field. " Ships are first built, and then sent on 
voyages," says Mr. Beecher, " but Western States are 
as if men were rafted to sea with materials, and were 
obliged to build the ship under them while they 
sailed ; yea, and to grapple in desperate conflict with 
piratical errors and red rovers of ignorance, while yet 
they are laying down the decks and setting up the rig- 
ging." ^ Nearly all the ready money in a new State is 
used in developing the country, in making the phys- 
ical basis for society. This is necessarily so. But as 
the years go by, many of the investments will return, 
and churches and seminaries of learning will be less 
dependent upon the older civilization. 

The amount of money needed to put a Christian 
college upon a good foundation, and to place it in po- 
sition to take advantage of the law of increase, is not 
relatively large. Williams College has made itself felt 
with great power in the moral world, and her fifteen 
hundred graduates in sixty years have borne an hon- 
orable part in national history. Yet her capital was 
not during any part of that time more than fifty thou- 
sand dollars.^ With one or two hundred thousand 
dollars cash capital a college can do good work ; and, 
as the years go by, it will grow under the law of in- 
crease. It is the privilege of donors to the American 
College and Education Society to render such aid that, 
with the gifts of local friends, the college will certainly 
go forward with increasing power in future ages. The 

^ College Society Address. 

2 Dr. Hopkins, College Society Address, 1852. 



THE NEW WEST. 63 

pledge of the trustees binding their successors, in con- 
sideration of these early gifts of Christian men, to 
maintain a Christian institution, is a pledge of far 
reaching influence, since, after the first generations, the 
college will from time to time by the law of increase 
receive the appointments of a university. 

The silver and the gold belong to Him who rules 
the world, and it is not difficult for Him to honor in- 
strumentalities that honor Him. Consecrated gold from 
the Colorado Mountains will enlarge and beautify her 
Christian Colleg-e. Oxford and Cambridu:e have been 
built up by private gifts. The capitalists who coin 
money in the New West will gladly aid in upbuilding 
institutions of learning. In the first four years of the 
present decade, thirty-three million dollars were given 
by private donors to the higher education in the United 
States. Men who are enriche^l by scientific research, 
love to bestow money on deserving colleges. Colorado 
College, which now rejoices greatly over a few pounds 
of butter or one or two sheep, as Harvard was formerly 
made glad by pecks of corn, will, we believe, some day 
become rich as Harvard with money by the million. 

The endowment papers of Colorado College have 
been most carefully drawn by that princely founder 
of a Christian college, Henry F. Durant. They are 
guarded at every point, to make sure that the money 
is used as the donors desire. An agreement is entered 
into between the College and the American College and 
Education Society and the donors, by which the money 
is given to the Society in trust for the College, to be 
used to promote Christian education in Colorado. The 
Society reserves the right to guard the investments of 
the money given to the College in trust by the Society. 
The teachers are to be Christian men. Biblical instruc- 



64 THE NEW WEST. 

tioii is to be furnished. The scope of the College con- 
templates the highest and broadest culture. It also 
nia,kes provision for the gradual growth of a training 
school for home missionaries. Two thirds of the trus- 
tees must be of Christian membership. One of the offi- 
cers of the American College and Education Society 
must be a perpetual trustee of the College. If the Col- 
lege property is turned over to any differently char- 
tered institution, or loses its franchise, or is not faithful 
to this trust, the money reverts to the American Col- 
lege and Education Society. Although the work of 
the College Department of the American College and 
Education Society may not be needed in a distant 
future, there will still be necessity for aiding young 
men in preparing for the ministry ; so that this corpor- 
ation is likely to exist as long as the College. Money 
given to the American College and Education Society 
for Colorado College will be as sure to accomplish the 
end sought by the donors as any foresight can make it. 
Divine Providence is just as likely to take care of the 
trust, if the legal instruments are well drawn, as if they 
were prepared carelessly or not prepared at all. 

If any investments are solid and lasting they are 
found in gifts to this Society. " It is putting money 
where the safeguards of law will surround it forever." ^ 
"The boards that control such institutions are ordi- 
narily selected for their capacity, intelligence, honesty, 
practical wisdom, and interest in the cause of learning. 
.... The individuals in question are put under the 
guardianship of law and of a watchful community, and 
under all the sanctions that come from the sacredness 
of the trust committed to them, a trust that touches 
upon the highest welfare of Church and State, and bears 
not only on the interests of the living age but of gen- 

1 H. Q. Butterfield, D. D., Coll. Soc. Rep. 



THE NEW WEST. 65 

erations to come." ^ Yale College has never lost a " dol- 
lar committed by any donor for permanent investment." 
So, too, not the smallest donations made to Harvard Col- 
lege in its infancy have been lost sight of; they " are 
at the present moment as secure and remunerative as 
those of yesterday." ^ God does not cease to preserve 
property when it is funded for education. Can we not 
trust Him out of our sight ? 

Nor can it be said that college foundations are liable 
to much perversion. In view of the changes which 
centuries have made in the great universities of Eng- 
land, the Parliamentary Commission expresses its con- 
fidence in the wisdom of these permanent foundations 
by recommending their large increase. The schools are, 
by the law, kept true to the spirit, if not always th(; 
letter, of the founders. The experience of ages has 
shown that the ideas of the founders have been, to a 
remarkable degree, perpetuated ; nor does any tempo- 
rary change indicate that the trust will not be fulfilled 
as the years go by. '• The spirit of the founders of an 
institution is a permanent spirit. . . . The promise is 
not more sure to parents in the training of their children, 
than is the providence of God in regard to the pious 
founders of institutions of learning." ^ The character 
of a Christian college, as it is formed age after age, 
becomes the best security for the right use of donations 
made to it. 

"If it include Christianity at the outset, and be 
framed to express that, then will that probably reign 
in and inspire it, with a power more apparent at some 
times than at others, but real all the time, even unto 
the end. It is not so much the provisions of charters, 

1 Twenty-firat Report College Society. 

2 Twenty-fourth Coll. Soc. Report. 

3 Fourteenth Report College Society. 



66 THE NEW WEST. 

enforced by courts, that will secure this. The self- 
evolving life of the college itself, in the long run, insures 
the result. And, as thus vitally and permanently asso- 
ciated with such centres of power, Christianity will have 
a hold on our country that cannot be paralleled, and 
that 7iever can be shaken. You might as well shake the 
mountain from its base, which is bolted by columns 
and shafts of granite to the centre of the earth." ^ 

•' All things considered," says President Eliot, " there 
is no form of endowment for the benefit of mankind 
more permanent, more secure from abuse, or surer to 
do good, than the endowment of public teaching in a 
well organized institution of learning." 

Sir Henry Maine, in an address before the University 
of Calcutta, gives it as his " fixed opinion that there is 
no surer, no easier, no cheaper road to immortality — 
such as can be obtained in this world — than that 
which lies through liberality expending itself in the 
formation of educational endowments." 

There is no way in which a friend of Christ and a 
lover of the human race can so certainly perpetuate 
his influence in some definite form, easily traced and 
recognized, as by the founding of a Christian college 
in a region and under circumstances where it will be- 
come a great power for good. When men's lives are 
perpetuated in a definite charity, so that they can be 
hailed by name by those who are benefited by it in 
distant ages, their lives at once seem to us the noblei 
while they are with us, and their names are taken at 
once out of the obscurity of the common check list or 
tax list and placed upon enduring tablets, which gener- 
ations to come will rise up and honor. " It is only a 
few men of rare discernment .... who can 
look beyond immediate and temporary issues to re- 

1 Dr. R. S, Storrs, College Society Address. 



THE NEW WEST. 67 

mote and permanent results. It is, therefore, simple 
even-handed justice to bestow rare honor on men of 
such rare wisdom and virtue ; to perpetuate their mem- 
ories by making them commensurate with the duration 
of the institutions which they have founded ; to mete 
out to them a height of renown, a breadth of esteem, 
and a depth of veneration corresponding with the 
breadth and length and height and depth of their 
foundations, and the comprehensiveness of views and 
elevation of sentiments by which they were distin- 
guished ; it is right and proper that those who have 
studied and labored and prayed and denied themselves, 
and sacrificed themselves to educate and enrich the 
minds and hearts of many generations, should be en- 
shrined in the grateful and affectionate remembrance 
of men from ao;e to ao;e." ^ 

There are single famihes that could equip a Chris- 
tian college in the West, and set it forward upon a ca- 
reer of usefulness, so long as grass will spring on the 
prairies or snow melt on the sides of the mountains. 
" Never lay up money," said the missionary Judson, 
" for yourselves or your families. Trust in God from 
day to day, and verily you shall be fed." It is impos- 
sible to make provision for families, which will hold for 
any great length of time in America. Even in Eng- 
land, where the descent of property is made a study 
and hedged aboi^t by law, the experience of centuries 
shows that the term of a wealthy house is short. It is 
better that the sons of the rich should be self reliant; if 
they are not, they are not competent to care for prop- 
erty, and soon lose it. There is no such spur as ne- 
cessity. Are there not many households scattered 

^ Professor Tyler, Discourse Commemorative of the Hon. Samuel Wil- 
liston. 



68 THE NEW WEST. 

througliout the country, which could easily found a 
Christian college, and then have abundance left for the 
next generation of their own kin, so much at least as 
would serve as a capital to be increased if well man- 
aged. If ill managed in the second generation it is 
well if there be not too much to waste. 

A country minister, accustomed to strong language, 
once asserted, that, when the bosom of charity should 
beat a little stronger, men would be found to sell houses 
and farms to promote the salvation of the heathen. 
" The child w^ill sit down and w^eep, who may not say, 
that his father and mother were the friends of missions. 
And what parent would entail such a curse upon his 
children, and prevent them from lifting up their heads 
in the millennium. I w^ould rather leave mine toiling 
in the ditch, there to enjo}^ the luxury of reflecting, 
that a father's charity made them poor. Poor ! They 
are poor who cannot feel for the miseries of a perishing 
world ; to whom God has given abundance, but who 
grudge to use it for His honor. Teach your children 
charity, and they can never be poor." '^ Still, when 
we handle the Word of God, and pray over it, we can 
but rise from our knees and devise charities ; and, if it 
is possible to provide spiritual blessing for half a con- 
tinent through all ages of time, we welcome the privi- 
lege. " I cannot tell you what I have enjoyed. It is 
like being born into the kingdom again." So said one 
who had given fifty thousand dollars cash to found a 
Christian college in a needy Western field. That was 
an hour for mutual congratulation, when a family gath- 
ered to pray over the gift of twenty-five thousand dol- 
lars, invested in a Christian college as a perpetual 
bounty to coming ages.^ 

1 Daniel A. Clark, D. D. 

2 First Report, American College and Education Society. 



THE NEW WEST. 69 

It is natural for parents to feel that their property 
belongs of right to their children. They have, per- 
haps, struggled for years to earn means for their 
maintenance. Or they have inherited property, which 
they feel it to be a duty to transmit. Providence has 
put it in their power to place their children above care, 
and give them capital for doing business. Their habits 
of caution have been formed by years of anxiety and 
careful saving. They have, moreover, had little defi- 
nite knowledge of the good to be accomplished by 
given charities, and the certainty of bringing about the 
desired result. On the other hand, it seems clear that 
their children will not misuse the property. It is also 
true that the mere habit of holding whatever they get 
is firmly fixed. It is not then strange that a large sum 
is often bequeathed to relatives, who do not really 
need it, which would, if otherwise bestowed, prove a 
fountain of good to the poor of the world during end- 
less generations. 

We are permitted to bear an honorable part in the 
world's salvation. It is possible for any one to multi- 
ply his personal influence, as if he were to become the 
spiritual and intellectual parent of thousands of stu- 
dents in future years. Permanent charities, carefully 
guarded, will perpetuate the character and good deeds 
of the donors so long as ships sail the sea. Do we not 
read of a devout man in an Arabian desert, who gave 
a cup of cold water to every man who passed his door ? 
It w^as to him a precious moment. He delighted in 
doing all the good he could every day. But it was 
suggested to him. that, if he would dig a well, his 
beneficence mi^ht extend to caravans, which would 
pass that way hundreds of years after his death. Trav- 
elers ready to perish now bless his memory, as they 
quench their thirst at the well-side. Will not those 



70 THE NEW WEST. 

families, whose wealth is consecrated to Christ, and 
whose life it is to do good deeds, set apart a portion of 
their property to open a fountain of spiritual life in 
the New West, where it will satisfy the thirsty until 
the mountains crumble ? 

Sir Matthew Holworthy's bequest of more than 
twelve hundred pounds to Harvard College, two cen- 
turies since, is making glad the students of to-day ; 
they rejoice in it as in the light of some distant star, 
whose beams have been making their way to the earth 
through ages. It is possible for us to light up the dark 
lives of children in New Mexico in the next genera- 
tion, by gifts to Colorado College to-day. The Gospel 
light will go forth from our charities, so long as God's 
mercy to the earth endures. 

Every Christian institution, whose fame and influ- 
ence now fills the world, had a definite beginning in 
the life of him who first put money into it. The found- 
ers of Oxford and Cambridge, of Harvard, Yale, Dart- 
mouth, Princeton, were men who could have thrown 
their silver into the sea, or they could have spent it in 
building more barn room for their goods. It would 
have been easy for them to have missed immortality. 
It is not difficult to neglect noble deeds. But those 
men are to be envied, who, having it in their power 
to gather wealth, have also the sagacity to seize rare 
opportunities for usefulness. The Venetian merchants 
of the thirteenth century stamped the image of Christ 
upon their coin. There are men in these days who 
do business by steam and by lightning, whose team 
horses I love to see upon the streets. I listen for the 
sound of their sweet bells, which make music unto the 
Lord. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness there- 
of," is written in their counting rooms. " See, my 



THE NEW WEST. 71 

lord/' said a general of the Society of Jesuits, " from 
this room — from this room I govern not only Paris, 
but China ; not only China, but the whole world, with- 
out any one knowing how it is managed." So, these 
Christian men rule no small part of the world from 
their counting rooms. Among their employees are 
men who organize Christian colleges. 

A man is manufacturing shoes, and he buys leather 
and hires men to do this and to do that. As one in- 
cident of his beneficent life, he hires a man to go West 
and found a college for him ; he pays skilled teachers 
to educate needy young men in the border country. 
He is shaping States as well as shoes ; and his work 
will go forward so long as rivers run to the sea. Here 
is a man buying and selling goods. He hires clerks 
to draw golden syrup, or to measure tape, and he also 
hires men to teach Greek and the English Bible in 
the New West. Does a man handle grain, and feed 
the horses of half a State ? Those horses pour money 
into uncounted channels for doing good to men. A 
Christian man studies the divine Word, and renews his 
consecration to God ; then goes to his counting room, 
and gives a hundred directions as to bags of liieal, or 
the buying and selling of cotton stuff, or he orders a 
new lot of shoe pegs ; and he also directs in the estab- 
lishment of some Christian college, whose fame will 
perpetuate his influence and will never allow his name 
to die. A young man in thrifty business will give 
within a lifetime enough to found a professorship : 
or, if he is early called into a higher sphere of life, his 
name will be honorable as that of John Harvard, who 
dying at thirty, erected for himself a monument which 
will last so long as sun and moon endure ; and whose 
influence as a benefactor of his race will extend 
throuo;h immeasurable aojes. 



72 THE NEW WEST. 

Those were memorable words which still ring in my 
ears, — " The Lord either means to make me poor, or 
He will give me more money. But I propose to keep 
on giving in these hard times when givers are few." 
The man witnessed with joy his diminishing store of 
earthly goods, and was glad to open the eyes of the 
poor and to cheer the hearts of those who had long 
moaned in bondage. " I must give while I can, if the 
Lord is taking away my property," said one who 
trebled his donation to Christian work, when he learned 
of a heavy loss in his business. A very successful and 
clear minded man declares that he will give more than 
he can, since he wants to do business leaning hard on 
God and leading a life of faith ; and he gives largely 
when ordinary business foresight would hardly justify 
it, affirmino; that he believes the Word of God, in which 
it is written and sealed that the Lord will prosper those 
who devote themselves to Him. 

A noble record comes to us from the English Univer- 
sities, in which scholarships are called to this day by 
the names of the working-men of London. Salters, 
Skinners, Leather Sellers, Haberdashers, Clothmakers, 
Merchant Tailors, Carpenters, Cordwainers, Cutlers, 
Goldsmiths, Grocers, and Fishmongers, — all aided in 
building up those schools of learning which are the 
glory of the world. 

"Never count any sacrifice too great for Christ," said 
Mary Lyon. Saeah Hosmer, of the Eliot Church in 
Lowell, supported a student in the Nestorian Seminary 
who became a preacher of Christ. Five times she paid 
fifty dollars, earning the money in a factory ; and 
sent five native pastors upon their errands of mercy. 
Living in an attic when she was more than sixty years 
old, she took in sewing ; and did not try to lay up cash, 
or live easily, as she might have done. She said that 



THE NEW WEST. 73 

she wanted to furnish another minister of Christ for 
Nestoria ; and she did it. Living only for Christ, she 
pHed her needle for Him. The pride of dress or pride 
of purse in that whole city will have no more honora- 
ble record in the last day than her's, although she was 
obscure, and was never richly clad. " There is many 
a martyr spirit," said Judson, " at the kitchen fire, over 
the wash-tub, and in the plow field ; many obscure 
men and women make personal sacrifices, beside which 
ours will appear in the great day very small indeed." ' 
Whenever Colorado College becomes an honor to the 
Christian charity of the country, — and we believe that 
the decrees of God have given it a noble future, — there 
will be found engraven upon its walls the names of a 
multitude of givers, the rich and the poor, who have 
added unspeakable dignity to their lives by founding 
this Christian enterprise, and thereby hastening the 
reign of Christ. Is it not worth the while to toil pa- 
tiently, to give largely, and to sacrifice for this work, 
during the first generation of the life of this College, to 
prepare it for its ages of service ? " If a rare oppor- 
tunity comes," says a sacred book of the far East, " let 
a man do that which is rarely done." 



